With the release of King Of Devil's Island on DVD and Blu Ray (It's really really good), we at Buz sat down with director Marius Holst to discuss shooting in cold conditions, making a film so intense and difficult, and the relevance of the child abuse story-line in the current world.

How did you get involved with the project?

I actually grew up in Oslo so I got the idea of doing the project 12 years ago, so it was supposed to be my second film, it became my fourth instead. A lot of time to find a way of telling it, but also to finance it. We don't work with huge budgets in Norway, and to make period drama it takes some resources. I actually started costing it twice and by the time I had to make it I costed it all over again because the kids had grown too old. I had the idea, and I went to a producer, and in the end it developed over the last ten years.

When I talked to Stellan a couple of months ago, I talked about research and he said he didn't do much so he could feel the character. I assume you did a lot of research.

Yes I did.

Is it easy to research this subject, is it well known?

I knew about the legend of the island, it's quite well known in that part of the country, and you have access to the riksarkivet [Norwegian archives], the files of the boys, of the institutions, of the teachers so that is accessible. When you really get close to the stories, of course talking to the men who were there, and I was fortunate to be able to speak to a few of them not who were there in 1915 but were there in the 30's and the 40's. And also files and rule-books, it's very interesting to read. It's very dry but you can read surprisingly much in-between the lines, what's not being said. It's very revealing for being written in that time what you can pull out of it today. What's not being said, and that is as much of the inspiration to the film, what was being said and what was not being said. To fill in those gaps.

When you were shooting, it's quite a cold and desolate film, how tough was the shoot?

Of course shooting outside for long periods and many long days in the snow is always, it takes energy out of you because you have to stay warm, but for a director usually that's the least of your problems. It might be the one that comes first to mind when you see the film but that's a small inconvenience compared to budgets, restrictions and light falling too early, amateur actors who disappear. There's so many things with this film that was difficult, but of course it sort of helps it in a way, because it's something physical that you can relate to, for the actors. But of course it pulls energy from everyone to work at those temperatures.

When you say disappear, do you mean go off the grid or just go home?

They can't really go off home because we're really isolated, living on this place, but these young actors, they've not been in films before, for them to adjust to the film shoot being very military, you have to be there on time, you have to deliver these lines, it's not about feeling that you want to, you have to. That was a new experience for a lot of them, that discipline. The amount of resources going into a day's shoot, you can't fuck around with that.

How long did it take to find these young actors, as you've already mentioned you've gone through a few iterations of them? How many actors did you go through?

I think I saw, I don't know the exact number but I worked through a year and a half, I picked actors from different parts of the country. Small villages, small towns, so I'm sure I saw a couple of thousand. But then if you see two thousand, then you see one hundred and fifty that are possibilities, and you narrow that down to eighty, fifty, and then in the end you have thirty and you go to a boot camp where you do improvisations, scenes, to see if you can get them to where they need to be to actually shoot the film. Many of the boys were from difficult backgrounds, Trond Nilssen who plays Olav is a guy who was in and out of institutions when he was growing up, so he carries that reality or that experience with him when he plays the part.

Beyond the issues with weather, the budgets, what was the atmosphere on set, with quite a tough subject that you live with day-in, day-out? Did you have a laugh, have a drink or was it quite intense?

No, I like to run a loose set, where people are in a good mood and it's less with the subject, which is tough, but it's my responsibility that the film has integrity because you're telling a true story. No, for me as a director you carry a lot of responsibility, I also co-owned the company that produced it so I carried a lot of the economical risk of the film, but also the artistic. So of course for me it wasn't the most light-hearted moments because a lot was riding on it, but we had fun, we kid around. You have to, because if you get too serious, especially around first-time actors, they get tense and then they protect themselves. I wanted them to be relaxed and be vulnerable in-front of the camera, so you have to make your actors feel at ease. In that respect, it's important to run a set where they feel relaxed. That's an important part of the job I have, so definitely it wasn't like church time, we kid around.

The film's gone worldwide, how have you responded to the success, and how have audiences responded?

It's always fascinating when you have a film like this, which is specifically a Norwegian story, and it really relates when you show it in Istanbul or New York or Madrid, and people react tot he same things. It is what I was hoping for, because it is a really universal story, you just have to make it as Norwegian as you can, and put as much of yourself in as you can, but the genre and the theme of it is universal. Every time I come to the states, the Penn State case that just cracked, with the cover-up of the abuse, and now here and in Spain with the Catholic church, these cases, these kinds of stories go on, and that was part of the reason to make the film. Not only because it was a known dark chapter in Norwegian history but these kinds of abuse of power and cover ups of people who should protect and help the oppressed, it goes on to this day. It hits a nerve still. I don't think people necessarily think "Oh yeah, that was in the news today" but I think it's in the back of their mind when they see it, so it feels slightly more relevant than if it was just a prison break movie that just entertained. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted it to have that because it's a story that keeps happening.

How do you feel about Scandinavian cinema's success globally in the last 5 years, and how has it changed the industry?

I think in a sense, I think Scandinavian cinema has slowly become more professional, in a sense, and the variety of genre and kind of films being made is wider than ever now, from quite pure entertainment to very narrow, more art-hosue more hardcore. So the breadth is quite wide i think because the Nordic Noir has become quite popular, it's opened it up a bit more to the rest of the world, and it's having an effect where it's giving some more confidence to filmmakers, especially abroad, but I think it's more about the individual making the film than the wave of films. Everything is being put into this Nordic dark genre, which I think it's much more varied than that. Different directors have different points of view.

What's next for you?

I'm looking at two projects now, hopefully I'll decide on that within the month. This month. I've been following a couple of projects and I've got to jump on one of them.

Can we hear anything?

Because these are projects that have been sent to me, until I commit, I can't really go out and speak about them. One of them is quite a big project and it has to do with some historical character, the other is something very different, more of a genre thing.

So you've got different choices, you're not stuck in one box?

No, I hope to do something very different next time.

Thank you very much.

King Of Devil's Island is available on DVD and Blu Ray now. Read our review here, and watch our interview with star Stellan Skarsgård.