I'm Free
2017 · 20m · Norway
Directed by Edvard Karijord, Bendik Mondal
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
On October 8, 2013, Geir Karijord vanished in Norway's Romsdal Valley and was never found. His son Edvard turns the camera on his own family, building an intimate portrait of loss, hope, and life shaped by unanswered questions.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a missing-person doc to be a procedural whodunit, and Karijord just... doesn't go there—instead he makes something about the texture of absence, which is genuinely weirder and more unsettling than any true-crime reveal could be.
A formally disciplined work that inherits from the essay film and intimate portraiture traditions while respecting the gravity of its subject; the restraint here—what it chooses *not* to exploit—feels as considered as every frame it does show.
The decision to keep the camera trained on the family's ordinary rituals and quiet conversations rather than chasing answers transforms a tragedy into something alive—it's the refusal to turn grief into narrative momentum that makes this devastatingly real.
Festivals
- Amandus Lillehammer International Student Film Festival 2017
- Nashville Film Festival 2017
- DOKFILM - Norwegian Documentary Festival 2017
- Norwegian Short Film Festival 2017, Terje Vigen Award
- Nordisk Panorama 2017
- Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival 2017
- DocUtah 2017
- Riga International Film Festival 2017
- Helsinki International Film Festival 2017