Ellen Ugelstad
Directing
Biography
Ellen Ugelstad was born on March 14, 1973 in Oslo, Norway. She is a visual artist and director and known for The Green Valley (2018), The Meeting Room (2017) and Making Sense Together (2018). She made her directorial debut with the very personal documentary Indian Summer (2011) about her younger brother living with schizophrenia. She lived and studied in California for seven years and received a BFA in Motion Pictures from Academy of Art University in San Francisco before she relocated back to Oslo. She works in a variety of genres ranging from poetic documentary to music-films, hybrids and fiction.Her work often explores the thin line between sanity and insanity, the hierarchy of power and explores different forms of reality. Indian Summer was nominated for the International Young Talent Award at DOK Leipzig and Nordic Dox Award under CPH:DOX, screened at Nordische FilmTage in Lubeck, and received two nominations at the Norwegian "Emmy-Award" called Gullruten. Her films migrates between different platforms between the film world and art world. The last few years she has explored the lines between fiction and documentary and her short film "The Meetingroom" won best screenplay from the Writers Guild at the Norwegian Shortfilmfestival in 2017. Her recent work includes the film-essay Making Sense Together, which screened in competition for best Nordic Documentary at Oslo:Pix in June 2018. The Green Valley recently received the Golden Chair for best short film at the Norwegian Shortfilm festival. She is also a recipient of a five-year artist grant from the Norwegian Art Council.
Known For
Robert moves from the Polish countryside to work on a fish processing factory on the coast of Norway. There he falls in love with Ivar who is openly gay and a member of the workers union. Robert is hiding his sexual orientation from the other Polish immigrant workers. When Ivar helps the Polish to start a strike for better working conditions at the factory, Robert has to choose between money or love.
Norwegian Dream
Making Sense Together investigates the relationship between power and powerlessness in psychiatric health care. The film is a hybrid, combining documentary with fictional elements.
Making Sense Together
In this kafkaesque meeting a mother and her son is fighting a clogged bureaucracy that intensify the personal suffering it is supposed to remedy.
The Meeting Room
In this documentary we meet a group of people at the age between 72 and 100 years who attend writing courses, led by professional writers. What happens when the elderly get room to speak, write and discuss?
I Write
The Green Valley is a short film that explores the connection between politics, art and daily life in a multicultural neighborhood in Oslo. The film is inspired by three real events that took place in the director's neighborhood.
The Green Valley
A woman invites her mother to an underwater restaurant to celebrate her 70th birthday. Their seemingly everyday conversation opens up questions about the individual and society, privileges and responsibilities, belonging and rejection.
The Wonders Beneath the Sea
Can love exist without madness? An ultra-intense, high-speed (self-)portrait of four women exploring the darkest corners of love without a filter. Hard, brutal and real – to a score by electro-queen Eartheater.
Megaheartz
Defeated by her own brother's decades-long struggle with the mental health system, a filmmaker contrives a fictional TV channel to expose the injustices of modern mental health treatments.
The Recovery Channel
What does it really mean to be good? What dilemmas arise when doing good? Through an episodic narrative structure, the good is explored across culture, class and ethnicity. With a humorous oblique look, Norwegian naivety, goodness and self-understanding are put to the test.
To Do Good
In 1975, renowned Norwegian filmmaker Arnljot Berg was arrested in Paris and charged with the murder of his third wife. Forty years later, his daughter Lene Berg is visited by the ghost of her now long-deceased father. He claims that she remembers everything wrong and that it’s time to ask the right questions. But what is it that he wants her to remember? And what are the right questions?
The Horsemen of the Apocalypse
When dreams and reality entangle, Torstein identifies himself as a Native American Indian. Indian Summer is the director's personal story about her younger brother, who has been battling schizophrenia for 17 years.