TEASER: https://vimeo.com/1055880015

MUSIC SESSION TEASER https://vimeo.com/1055370068

- Short synopsis 600 tegn.

In a remote Arctic village rebranded as a winter  tax haven, wealthy Romeo meets Vlad, a neurotic war refugee. Despite clashing worlds, love blooms—until assassin Natasha arrives to kill Vlad. Her bungled attempts (ice fishing ambushes, violent sauna brawls, poisoned coffee foiled by reindeer) escalate until Ågot, the village matriarch, hurls her off a balcony. At their chaotic New Years wedding—attended by billionaires, refugees, and a plaster-wrapped Natasha—the village becomes a beacon of hope, proving love thrives even in the harshest conditions.

- Long synopsis.

In the Norwegian mid-winter, a godforsaken village in the icy north is hellbent on becoming the exception to the global trend of people leaving the periphery for the cities. As the latest desperate measure to hold on to its residents and invite new ones in, they've re-branded themselves as an Arctic tax haven—opening a retirement home exclusively catering to very old, extremely rich people. Alongside the village’s other inhabitants, consisting of asylum seekers, a large influx of tourists, and a motley collection of locals, these elderly billionaires add to a peculiar community.

Immense wealth collides with tragic refugee stories in this hinterland of Europe. Yet despite bitter adversity, perhaps love can prevail?

Just before Christmas, Romeo arrives—a boarding-school-educated tax refugee with immense wealth and strict instructions from his mother (a former cross-country skiing champion turned thermal underwear magnate) to protect the family's fortune. Instead of luxury, however, Romeo discovers an unusual and inclusive community led by the formidable Ågot. With years of experience managing the village’s main lodge, currently a hybrid of luxury retirement home, refugee shelter, tourist lodge—and with a stable full of animals in the back—Ågot keeps the place running.

At the heart of the story, Romeo meets Vlad, a somber war refugee and carpenter who prefers drywall and solitude to people. Haunted by his past, and a newly arrived eviction letter, Vlad trusts no one—especially not spoiled rich kids. But as Romeo, forced out of his element, finds he has an unexpected talent for the varied and practical challenges of rural life, including the challenge of warming the heart of the slightly paranoid Vlad, sweet music begins to play between them.

Then parachutes Natasha into the story—a hired assassin sent to kill Vlad due to dark secrets from his military past—secrets that not only endanger his life but also threaten his right to stay in Norway. Despite her deadly skills, Natasha's assassination attempts repeatedly fail in comedic ways: sabotaging the village water supply to trap Vlad, attacking Vlad and Romeo during an ice fishing trip (they barely escape after falling into icy waters), attempting to polonium-poison Vlad’s coffee thermos amidst a herd of reindeer only to be foiled by a group of Chinese tourists, and finally, a sauna ambush that ends with her own humiliation and scalding, thanks to some clever body-painters.

As the village prepares for its annual Christmas celebrations, the romantic bond between Vlad and Romeo strengthens. For the first time, Romeo feels valued for who he is, not just his mother’s money. Even Vlad, despite his reservations and mistrust, gradually warms to Romeo’s persistence—enough that he begins to consider a marriage proposal, cleverly offering solutions to both residency issues and loneliness.

But assassin Natasha hasn’t given up. At the climactic lutefisk Christmas dinner, she sneaks in through the kitchen for one last assassination attempt—this time armed with a massive butcher knife. But she underestimates Ågot. The village matriarch exhibits surprising brute strength, tossing Natasha off the balcony. Natasha survives, just barely, but with nearly every bone in her body broken.

On the final day of the year, the entire community gathers in the small northern Norwegian church for Vlad and Romeo’s wedding. Villagers decorate, body-painters livestream, Chinese photo-tourists act like paparazzis, and billionaire retirees shed tears. Even Natasha is rolled into the back of the church, wrapped head-to-toe in plaster like an unwilling Christmas present. The church organ thunders as fireworks illuminate this improbable place—a village acting as a crack in a dark and complicated world, a crack through which love, light, and second chances shine through.

- Director's note 1750 tegn.

At the core of this story, the periphery is centre of the world: an international and drama-filled outpost where the big issues connected to war, migration and economy collide when human fates try to find light, love, and community.

Firstly, I am a gay man, born into the secrecy and silencing of the 70s, on a farm in a tiny outpost of Northern Norway. Society has since then changed rapidly. The outpost is in now a historically safe place for gays and other minorities. Simultaneously, also within Europe, the situation for human rights is fragile, deteriorating and threatening. Political rhetoric is pointing accusatory fingers at minorities, as the cause of all kinds of problems. In this project, the personal and the political are inseparable.

Secondly, the north of Norway is of increasing strategic importance as the foundations for our political safety is shifting as militarization escalates. I bring echoes of present armed conflicts into this story, to say that we are all affected indirectly by each others’ realities, and humans are crossing borders with their difficult “baggage” more than ever.

Thirdly, I am telling a story from my home. I have lived 20 years in European cities, but for the last nine years I’m back in a place very similar to that tiny outpost mentioned earlier. Now a safe place, of inclusion and neighbourship.

Lastly, as much as this is based on the present-day reality, we are also creating a fictional world in The Carpenter’s Crack. It’s a statement, partly allegorical, about what a society should and could be. I think there is something explosive, about an uninhibited gay love story, on a backdrop of European war, violence and persecution that comes to a happy ending by church marriage.

Director biography

Trygve Luktvasslimo (b. 1978) is an artist and filmmaker based in the village of Valberg in the region of Lofoten, Norway. He holds an MFA in Visual Art from Lund University in 2006. His career involves experience in many different formats and expressions, but over the last years he has moved toward broader platforms by focusing on fiction in a number films, he has also published a novel and a poetry book, and an audio drama. In addition to curating numerous exhibitions and public art projects, teaching at film and art colleges, as well as being a sought-after member of artistic advisory boards and jurys.

Trygve’s work explores peripheral perspectives on global and existential themes. He’s motivated by how art and culture can reflect on shifting societies: the interplay of politics, economics, and local participation, and how even small communities are part of the world’s larger narrative.

Filmography

The Bitcoin Car (94 min, 2023). Feature film debut that internationally premiered in the main competition at Slamdance 2024. Streams with Altibox (Norway), was theatrically released nationally in 2023 and was first screened at Festspillene i Nord-Norge, a regional arts festival.

The Pearly Gates of Opportunity (55 min, 2021 *fictional play executed as audio drama due to covid restrictions)

The Vegan Toothbrush (37 min, 2019)

Clay Pigeon (9 min, 2018)

Closer to More (30 min, 2016)

An Emotional Sherpa (22 min, 2015)

A More Robust Sense of Identity (16 min, 2014)

Links to previous works

Bitcoinbilen: https://vimeo.com/817566216 Password: BitcoinbilenPreview

The Vegan Toothbrush: https://vimeo.com/358029137 Password: Blackout

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8377192/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_0_nm_1_in_0_q_trygve%2520luktvassdlimo

VISUAL APPROACH

The Carpenter’s Crack is set in the Arctic mid-winter, and the interplay between light and dark becomes the central concept, both visually and metaphorically.

Light (and dark) is present through an extensive and imaginative use of both natural and artificial light sources, crowned by an overload of garish Christmas lights. Artificial light repeatedly seeps through cracks, which adds poetry, sometimes magic. In the construction of images we would work our way from a “chiaroscuro” tradition of an accented use of contrast.

Although, and importantly, the imagery needs to carry softness and nuance, so everything from camera sensors and lenses, to light design and makeup, needs to be developed into a sophisticated and elegant concept. As an example, take the aurora borealis, the northern lights. A beautiful and mesmerizing experience, no doubt, but if you ever saw the harsh glow-in-the dark greens often captured in photos, you know those images dont do the experience justice. Softness, a well-balanced colour saturation, and subtle textures are crucial.

– Darkness is never black

Light is representative of the world of love, the dark is the world without. And then we have, both visually and metaphorically, this crack between, where the love (and light) comes through. Another metaphor, which also translates visually, is that the two lovers Vlad and Romeo, start to orbit each other, like “the sun and the moon” (obviously in reality those two celestial objects don’t orbit each other – but lovers do).

Darkness is represented through physical violence constantly knocking on the door in this story. Maybe first and foremost through the character of Vlad, who has experienced the horror of war and has perhaps killed. And now the repeated attempts at his life. The Assassin will double this physical battering, but also Romeo will echo the violence, but in a much milder sense, through near-accidents, being wet, cold, stumble, etc.

– Maybe violence and loss are what rip open the crack which light can enter through?

The objects and production design

The visual world we create is also founded in the duality and dichotomies of light versus dark: two worlds combined, but still distinct and separate. What that means in terms of production design, is that there is always some sense of an original, or natural world, that has been ornamented, decorated, revitalized, or pimped out – to make it seem more attractive. A revitalized village.

One central idea is to put palm trees everywhere, as to impose notions of “paradise” and another world. The aforementioned overload of Christmas lights is there along the same concept: an added, but not necessarily integrated, decoration on a place that has natural grandeur, a harsh climate, and generally icy, dark and quite merciless conditions in the mid-winter. This double visual presence of what the place is, and what it is trying to be, motivates our decisions in the production design. This also echoes an often-heard complaint on Christmas itself, that the visual façade of the holidays, with its snow crystals and colourful lights and happy woolen sweaters, somehow manages to accentuate darker truths, for example someone’s loneliness.

Central to the world of objects are two categories. One is Vlad’s carpentry world, with its parade of other tools: noisy saws, measuring devices, drills, screws, metals, vibrations, drywall, temporary structures. Energetic, explosive, almost violent in themselves. And the hammer, which transitions into a weapon at a point in the story, with blood dripping from it. The weapons of Natasha are the second prominent category, with its own parade of machine rifles, ice drills, lazer guns, special force parachutes and butcher knives.

Some light sources: A leading star in the sky. Moonlight. Mid day low light. Northern lights. Daylight lamp. Christmas lights. Car lights. UV-light from water cleaning plant. Street lights. Fireworks. Mobile phones. Rainbow.

We are developing this world with production designer Renate Nicolaisen 

ARTISTIC APPROACH

– A remote microcosm of the globalized world

The project portrays a small community that represents a much larger world, filled with people in transit, on the move, or on the run. Tourists, climbing influencers, labor migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and the ultra-rich fleeing taxes and regulations—all in an energetic mix with whatever remains of the so-called “original” village.

The local municipality in this story is a scenic and remote microcosm, where politics and business are deeply entangled, and where tourism has completely boomed. Over the years, various initiatives have been attempted to increase the appeal of living here, reverse depopulation, and stimulate growth. The latest in this series of revitalization efforts is the introduction of a “tropical tax rate” to attract people with substantial fortunes.

This community has also run asylum centers through every refugee crisis, built a monastery to accommodate labor migration from certain Catholic countries, launched a Dutch immigration campaign (one can still spot them wearing wooden clogs on special occasions), facilitated for ”workaways” and job nomads, hosted influencers to market the village, developed various tourism ventures, and even established a private luxury retirement home—for the ultra-wealthy, of course.

The project weaves in global politics through the themes of migration and war in the distance. It also touches on the global economy through the unintended consequences of its tax haven status. This village is timely, international, and diverse. We further want to push it towards being a free-spirited, humorous, sparkling and revitalized oasis—international and corny.

At the heart of our story are two people trapped in vastly different pasts—who find freedom in a future together. They are located in a place far, far away, but where the large undercurrents of the world seem to gather. For Christmas.

What the world needs now. Is love, sweet love.

Christmas and values

The goal is to develop a full-length screenplay that, at its core, explores ethics and humanity in a time of major upheavals and shifting forces. Two worlds collide in a love message:

●         Vlad, a defector from a private army group, fled to Norway, but his original flight was from persecution of his own family on account of being gay.

●         Romeo, an adopted Oxford-educated son of a cross-country Olympic gold medalist-turned-real estate magnate, a misfit in a family of overachievers.

Both Vlad and Romeo are feeling trapped—though for nearly opposite reasons.

Setting the story at Christmas provides an allegorical gateway into the narrative—without becoming didactic. The village in the story serves as an incomplete microcosm of the planet Earth, with people from different corners of the world and vastly different backgrounds. The grand house at the center of the story can be reminiscent of the inn from the Nativity story, or even as a kind of Noah’s Ark.

At the same time, Christmas is mainly a backdrop; the film does not center around a religious Christmas message but rather a broader, slightly thwarted, message of hope—that there is hope for everyone. Holidays and gatherings - this is universal.

Musical concept

There is no Christmas (movie) without music. This is a parallel, but important, pursuit in the script development. We want to explore whether Vlad and Romeo might have musical moments together. That they sing both separately and together—not as a traditional musical, but as a unique emotional layer between them. Everything else in the film, involving other characters, will unfold through regular dialogue. The idea is that these two characters exist within their own universe inside the larger universe of the film.

In the audiovisual world of The Carpenter’s Crack, with action, comedy and strangeness, the music should be thought of as some sort of an anchor into the ground, to the the dark, to the dirt and soil, to existence itself. Musically, the concept of light and dark, and the huge dynamic range between the two, makes a musical concept outline that requires a composer with profound and knowledge of orchestration and a prominently developed sense of strong melodic themes and instrumentation focused on singular instruments.

The light and dark of the characters, their mixed cultural origins and languages, and the dramatic sincerity of their feelings and love for each other needs to come through in the musical development - lyrically and melodically.

Also- the wide culture and history of Christmas musical traditions, has to be explored how to enter into the musical concept.

Director Trygve Luktvasslimo has composed music for some of his earlier films, and his last film was a musical. So we have a solid foundation for developing music as a prominent part of this project, and that is strongly connected to the further writing process.

We are developing this further with with the hugely talented composer Tõny Kõrvits

IMDB

MUSICAL EXAMPLE 1

MUSICAL EXAMPLE 2

Characters

VLAD Our in-the-closet gay, ended up with a private army group in a bid to get out of his home country, known to mercilessly persecute lgbts – in fact, he was rightfully afraid his own family would kill him. He thought he could make some money as a soldier, which he hoped could take him to a better location. Vlad is trying to be hard to read, but he also tears up easily. He likes to sing, preferably when he’s alone. Vlad needs a way to secure his residency in Norway, or he faces deportation—or worse. He’s alone in the world.

ROMEO A young heir of a former cross-country skiing queen turned real estate and sportswear tycoon. His mother the matriarch has decided Romeo, now in his mid twenties, needs to be assigned purpose, being the odd one out in a family of optimized people. She has transferred a large part of the family fortune to him, hoping he will “man up”—on the condition that he must officially reside in the new Northern Norwegian tax haven, thus saving her millions in taxes. Educated at an international boarding school, but how can he break free from being trapped in a familial web?

THE MATRON – ÅGOT  Very old! Former mayor. Lives in and runs the central building in this story, which is part tourist lodge, part refugee center, part nursing home, part her own mansion - and with a barn full of animals in the back. She has “adopted” a refugee family who lives in the house with her. The mother Inah works as cook in this multifunctional house - with a huge group of children. Ågot also has animals, and rumors have it she brings the animals indoors. Turns out, it’s true. She has lambs in the living room.

THE ASSASSIN - NATASHA  The assassin is sent to kill Vlad because he might leak top secret and scandalous military-related information. Natasha doesn’t speak much. Jumps out of planes. Action-movie fit. Ends up paralyzed, encased in plaster from head to toe. Natasha repeatedly fails at attempting to kill Vlad, and is both inflicting violence, and being the victim of violence.

THE COOK Inah experiments too much with traditional dishes. Turns classic Norwegian food into something gourmet with her own unique influences. The traditional “lutefisk” with saffron. “Pinnekjøtt” with banana. Mother to a large flock of kids. Fled from a faraway country. The children’s father is dead.

There are severeal groups of characters, to help build a vibrant, bustling feeling in this little village. The groups also add levels of commentary in various forms, as these groups appear as a children’s cacophony, paparazzi style tourists, influencer-bodypainters, or as representatives of how to make money in today’s world.

THE BODY PAINTERS Introverted, lovers of solitude and connection with Mother Earth, but also influencers, obliged to document every moment of their lives. Cultish, 70s Jesus hippie style. They are doing a self-organized body painting retreat for the Christmas holidays.

THE SUPER-RICH SUPER-OLD RETIREMENT HOME PEOPLE A group of people, wealthy from the most eccentric stories, from hig-end car perfume to crypto pyramide schemes. In the further writing process diversified and eccentric in all kinds of directions. To play with!

A GROUP OF TOURISTS On a photography workshop, also staying at the inn/tourist lodge/retirement home. Always appear with cameras and long lenses, a sort of paparazzi-ish group, interested and nosy.

THE CHILDREN Cackling, choir-like. From ages 5-12.They will say the things other people are thinking. The are inventive and creative, making their own toys and games, a resourcefulness that comes from scarcity.