Andre Ovredal Exposes the TROLLHUNTER

Andre Ovredal waited over a decade before embarking on his second adventure in feature filmmaking. He used the time to hone his skills as a successful commercial filmmaker in his native Norway, a country whose folklore gifted him with the premise of TROLLHUNTER. A man with a quick wit, and a killer smile, he talked about why he’s glad he waited, the finer points of giving trolls a voice, why he doesn’t regret using only one camera while filming with no coverage, as well as his wry mock-doc’s underlying ecological theme.

TROLLHUNTER is his very dark, very funny faux documentary that follows a college film crew as they blow the lid off of the Norwegian government’s massive cover-up about the existence of trolls. With the initially reluctant cooperation of Hans, the government functionary tasked with controlling rogue trolls, they discover the more than they could ever have imagined, or wanted to, for that matter, before going missing leaving only the startling footage of their adventure behind. The film stars Otto Jespersen as Hans, Hans Morten Hansen as the bureaucrat fretting about tourism who thinks bears make a good cover story for the havoc the trolls wreak, and Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck, Thomas Alf Larsen, and Urmilla Berg Domas as the students in for a big lesson. While a student at the Brooks Institute of Photography, Ovredal co-directed that institution’s first feature, FUTURE MURDER, which played at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 1997. In the meantime he has made a name for himself working in commercials.