Cinema
Little Ida
Liten Ida
Laila Mikkelsen · 1981
Synopsis
Winter 1944, a small town on the coast of northern Norway. Ida, seven, arrives with her mother and her older brother. The mother, a cook in a prisoner camp run by the Germans, lives with an SS officer. Ida enters this new world full of trust, and the village rejects her: the children bully her, the adults shun her, she is made to pay for what her mother does. The winter passes, the war ends, and peace, she believes, will make everyone love one another. Her mother then sends her to a foster family in the countryside.
Context
The film is based on a partly autobiographical book by Marit Paulsen, published in 1979, which the author adapted with the director and the cinematographer Hans Welin. It was shot in 1980 in the Norsk Film studios, in Oslo and in Brønnøysund. The subject touched an imperfectly healed wound: the fate, at the Liberation, of the Norwegian women who had consorted with the occupier, and of their children. Everything passes through what the little girl perceives, which led to its being compared with Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. It was better received abroad than in Norway.
Who it is for
Eighty-seven minutes, in Norwegian. The story is seen from a child's height; knowing how women accused of consorting with the occupier were treated at the Liberation helps in following it.
Prizes and reception
Guldbagge for best actress, shared between three performers in the film, and regarded as a classic of Norwegian cinema, above all outside Norway.