Different Approaches to the Recreation of a Real Event on Film

On 22 July ten years ago, a bomb attack occurred near government facilities in Oslo. Less than two hours later, another attack occurred on the island of Utøya, in which 69 people were killed. Both acts were committed by Anders Behring Breivik, a thirtytwo-year-old Norwegian with far right beliefs. He described the attacks as the start of a war against multiculturalism and the Islamization of Europe. This is the biggest massacre that occurred in Norway since World War II. Norwegian society dealt with the consequences of the attacks in different ways, one of them being through film. Seven years after the attacks, three feature films discussing the events were made, as well as a series that came out last year. The four works, although dealing with the same subject, differ in many ways; not only in form and technique but also in their approach and the processing of the event. In order to compare the works, the text considers the following three elements: authentic recreation, the representation of the perpetrator, and the intention of the filmmaker.

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