Beta Cinema has sold Growth of the Soil (Markens grøde), Hans Petter Moland’s adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s novel and Norway’s entry for the international feature Oscar, to buyers in 15 territories, with Greenwich Entertainment taking North America. The Munich-based sales company announced the deals on 10 November, the opening day of the American Film Market, and Deadline and Variety published the full buyer list. No prices were disclosed.
The buyers are signing for a film that has already proved itself at home. Growth of the Soil opened at No. 1 in Norway on 30 October and had sold 89,394 tickets by the end of its second weekend, according to Filmweb data, a start that gives distributors abroad something firmer than festival reviews to sell on.
Key facts
- Deals: 15 territories or territory groups, sold by Beta Cinema; 10 of them in Europe
- North America: Greenwich Entertainment; UK and Ireland: Conic; Germany and Austria: Neue Visionen
- Norway: No. 1 on its opening weekend, 30 October–1 November; 89,394 admissions after two weekends
- Public money: NOK20m ($2.1m) from the Norwegian Film Institute, NOK17.5m ($1.8m) of it for production
- Festivals: world premiere at Toronto; two competition prizes at San Sebastián, for Asta Kamma August and cinematographer Oskar Dahlsbakken
The buyers
The larger European markets have gone to specialist distributors: Neue Visionen for Germany and Austria, Teodora Film for Italy, Conic for the UK and Ireland and A Contracorriente Films for Spain. The Spanish deal is not new this week. A Contracorriente bought the film before its San Sebastián premiere in September, the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) said at the time.
The rest of Europe is split between Cherry Pickers (Benelux), Frenetic Films (Switzerland), Weird Wave (Greece), Scanorama (the Baltics), Vertigo Media (Hungary) and Beta Film (Bulgaria). Beyond Europe, Big Tree Entertainment has India, Falcon Pictures Indonesia, Imovision Brazil and Palace Films Australia and New Zealand.
That puts 10 of the 15 deals in Europe, by FilmBunch’s count. France, Japan and South Korea are among the markets yet to be announced. In Scandinavia the film is released by Scanbox Entertainment, which co-produced it with Håkon Øverås’s 4½ Fiction, according to Beta Cinema and the trade reports, although Filmweb, Norway’s cinema listings service, names Ymer Media as the Norwegian distributor.
The film and its run
Herbert Nordrum (The Worst Person in the World) plays Isak, a man without a past who crosses the mountains to clear a farm above the tree line. Asta Kamma August plays Inger, the woman who builds a life and a family with him. Moland wrote the screenplay with Gard B. Eidsvold, who also appears in the cast with Anders Baasmo, Oddgeir Thune and Sjur Vatne Brean. Hamsun’s 1917 novel was the book named in his 1920 Nobel Prize citation.
The film premiered as a Special Presentation at Toronto on 12 September before moving into competition at San Sebastián, where August won the Silver Shell for best leading performance and Dahlsbakken the jury prize for cinematography. It has since opened the Bergen International Film Festival and is shortlisted for best film at the European Film Awards.
It is Moland’s second film to represent Norway at the Oscars, after Out Stealing Horses in 2019. Alongside the NFI’s NOK20m, it was backed by the Danish Film Institute, Filmfondet Zefyr, Oslo Filmfond and Nordisk Film & TV Fond, according to the institute, which did not publish their contributions.
At the Norwegian box office
Growth of the Soil sold 32,855 tickets over its first Friday-to-Sunday weekend, knocking the comedy Pensjonskuppet off the top of the Kinotoppen chart, and reached 40,167 including previews. The following week’s chart revised that opening to 33,023. Its second weekend, 6–8 November, brought 22,101 admissions, a fall of about a third, and the film slipped to third behind the Christmas film Julenissens verksted and Pensjonskuppet.
The total of 89,394 compares with 267,306 for Pensjonskuppet after four weekends. Norwegian charts count admissions, and no gross has been published.
Our reading
A Norwegian period drama of about two and a half hours is not an easy theatrical sell abroad. Fifteen territories on the first day of AFM suggest Beta Cinema has turned festival prizes and a domestic No. 1 into buyer confidence. The North American deal matters most in the short term: an international feature submission without a US distributor has no one to run its awards campaign.
Beta has used the same market to close eight territories for I Is Another, and its US deal follows one for Morocco’s Oscar entry Strawberries. Norwegian producers face an autumn in which the NFI has paused new applications to 16 support schemes. For them, the film shows what a large public grant can carry: a domestic chart-topper and buyers on five continents. The next markers are the territories still open, France and Japan above all, and whether the Academy’s international feature shortlist keeps the film in the race.
Sources
- Deadline, Beta Cinema’s Growth of the Soil deals, 10 November 2026
- Variety, Growth of the Soil sells to North America, UK, Germany, Spain and more, 10 November 2026
- Screen International, Growth of the Soil sells wide (headline), 10 November 2026
- Beta Cinema, Growth of the Soil film page
- Norwegian Film Institute, awards for Asta Kamma August and Oskar Dahlsbakken in San Sebastián, 26 September 2026
- Cinema (cine.no), Kinotoppen 30 October–1 November 2026
- Cinema (cine.no), Kinotoppen 6–8 November 2026 (Filmweb data)
- Filmweb, Markens grøde film page