Please note, the 2/2 Wednesday screening has been rescheduled to Sunday 1/30 at 9:00pm.

The premise is deceptively straightforward: five teenagers—from different social strata, each uncomfortably navigating the pressures and expectations of the typical American high school—find themselves confined to the school library for detention one Saturday morning. They view one another with mutual suspicion and defensiveness at first, then spend the ensuing hours dismantling those defenses, bickering, brooding, teasing, confiding, and commiserating. In the hands of John Hughes and his prodigiously gifted ensemble of young actors, the result is transcendent: a parable of human beings on the cusp of adulthood, confronted with the startling truth that finding ways to connect authentically with other people is essential to the work of being and knowing oneself. Shot on location in the Chicago suburbs of the filmmaker’s youth, with compassion and an emotional specificity that transcends generations, its legacy only continues to grow more than three decades after its release.

US cinema was dominant in Norway in the 80s and both of us had seen and loved this movie growing up. Looking back I guess we could say this was our gateway drug to Bergman: a character driven drama disguised as a high school comedy. John Hughes was a master of smuggling: if it’s Bergman in this movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is like a master class in nouvelle vague charm and formalism.  —Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt