Paul Greengrass is known for a brand of immersive, visceral filmmaking that puts the viewer in the middle of the action – but in “22 July,” his new film about a terrorist attack that took place in Norway in 2011, the British director of “Captain Phillips” and the “Bourne” movies is more interested in what happens after the action has ended.
What happened is that the country responded to the attack “with the rule of law, not the barrel of a gun,” says Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (played by Ola G. Furuseth) in the film. “22 July” follows several stories in the aftermath of an attack on a government building and then a youth camp, which killed more than 70 people, most of them children: a teenage survivor (Jonas Strand Gravli) trying to recover from his injuries, a lawyer (Jon Oigarden) duty-bound to defend the terrorist, and that terrorist himself Anders Behring Breivik (Anders Danielsen Lie).
“It’s a story that speaks to all of us, because of what we’ve been seeing over the last 10 years — the vigorous dynamic growth of the violent far right,” says Greengrass in a special video featurette premiering exclusively on TheWrap.
“These were real people’s lives,” adds Greengrass, who consulted extensively with victims’ organizations and the families of the dead and wounded before agreeing to make “22 July” with an all-Norwegian cast and crew.
“I’ve seen this time and again – people go on a journey toward meaning,” he said. “They want to know why it happened. They want to know what it means. But most of all they don’t want it forgotten.”
“22 July” is playing in theaters and on Netflix.