Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s zombie film “Dealing with the Undead,” premiering at Sundance and to be launched within the U.S. by Neon, sees the reunion of Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, the celebrities of Oscar-nominated “The Worst Particular person within the World,” in a poetic, visually-charged chronicling of a sizzling summer time’s day in Oslo when the useless mysteriously come again to life.

Hvistendahl’s function debut, an adaptation of the eponymous novel by “Let the Proper One In” writer John Ajvide Lindqvist, isn’t your standard zombie film. “It’s essential to say to people who find themselves going to see it that they shouldn’t anticipate the common zombie flick. I made the movie with the zombie style in thoughts, and needed to subvert a few of the traditional tropes, but when persons are solely searching for a thrill, this movie won’t be it!,” quips the director.

The director credit her resolution to have a toned down, dialogue-light style movie to desirous to make a “film for the cinema.” “If you end up attempting to cowl an excessive amount of, it type of fizzles out, so I regularly started eradicating an increasing number of dialogue. You don’t have to feed your viewers with pointless data. Since what’s taking place is kind of absurd, I felt like speaking about it an excessive amount of would take away the area for the viewers to place themselves into the movie.”

This stylistic selection, based on the director, was impressed by the likes of Lynne Ramsay and Lucile Hadžihalilović and is on par with Hvistendahl’s brief movies, typically closely stylized snapshots of a personality’s psychological decay. It was exactly the distinctive voice in Hvistendahl’s shorts that attracted Cannes finest actress winner Renate Reinsve to “Dealing with the Undead.”

“[Thea] simply does her personal factor. She may be very courageous in her inventive selections and I knew she was going to do one thing totally different, one thing particular,” Reinsve tells Selection out of Sundance, the place she arrives with not solely “Dealing with the Undead” however Aaron Schimberg’s A24 psychological thriller “A Totally different Man,” through which she co-stars with Sebastian Stan.

Hvistendahl is nicely conscious of the thrill surrounding the reunion of Reinsve and Danielsen Lie, and hopes individuals gained’t be upset to study the 2 don’t share a scene since they belong to totally different storylines inside the movie.

“After I forged the 2, I didn’t know the way massive a hit ‘The Worst Particular person within the World’ was going to be. Then I believed it was a bit wack that they didn’t play towards one another [laughs], however they had been positively the perfect ones for the components and we as a rustic don’t have a whole lot of actors to select from. I feel it’s good that folks know them, and I perceive that lots of people are enthusiastic about seeing them collectively — it’s actually fortunate for me.”

The duo signed up for “Dealing with the Undead” earlier than Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Particular person within the World” made a giant splash on the 2021 Cannes Movie Pageant, with Danielsen Lie first telling Hvistendahl he and Reinsve had been headed to the French Riviera throughout a digital camera take a look at for the zombie film three years in the past.

Reinsve says of reuniting with Danielsen Lie: “We talked about it being a social realism movie however going right into a fantastical phase. We had been very curious as to how we had been going to do that and for the reason that storyline moved us a lot. We ended up connecting although we don’t share a scene collectively.”

She provides that “The Worst Particular person within the World” was “life-changing for individuals, and for us as nicely,” and hopes individuals will have the ability to relate to Anna, her character in “Dealing with the Undead,” as a lot as they did with hopeless romantic Julie. “After I get into a personality I attempt to be altruistic — it’s not about me, it’s about individuals connecting to this character.”

On prime of getting two movies premiering at Sundance this yr, Reinsve simply completed taking pictures Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s “Armand” and can start taking pictures her subsequent collaboration with Trier in August, a household drama titled “Sentimental Worth.”

Different tasks within the pipeline embody “The Governess,” the sophomore function of “The Final Black Man in San Francisco” director Joe Talbot, alongside Lily-Rose Depp, and Piero Messina’s sci-fi “One other Finish,” starring Gael García Bernal and Bérénice Bejo.