Norwegian director Gunnar Hall Jensen has made a trademark of his playful and quirky self-portraits in which his reflections on life often find a universal echo. His latest film, “Portrait of a Confused Father,” set out to explore his relationship with his son, drawing on footage filmed over 20 years. Three weeks before filming was to have wrapped, he heard that his son had been killed.
Hall Jensen speaks to Variety about how he found the courage to complete his film amid his and his family’s immense grief. The trailer to the film, which has its world premiere Sunday at CPH:DOX, debuts below.
The highly personal documentary is a heartfelt and raw story of a middle-aged control-freak father, who struggles to connect with his defiant son. It’s a story of love, of the difficulty and beauty of parenthood, but also of loss.
We see Gunnar – the filmmaker/protagonist – who does his utmost to connect with his beloved rebellious only son, while navigating his own traditional and slightly outdated concepts of masculinity. As Jonathan turns into a defiant self-confident young man, testing his own limits, Gunnar gets confused, like any parent with kids from Gen Z would, but also because Gunnar’s own father – a captain on a cruise ship in the Caribbean – was never there for him.
Then when Jonathan turns 18, things go south. The young man disappears for weeks, after having emptied his saving accounts. When Gunnar finally finds him, Jonathan is living a completely different life in Brazil with a male social media influencer with over 10 million followers. Drawn by the promise of easy money and a world of hyper masculinity, Jonathan starts to lose control. One day, Gunnar gets a phone call that will change his and his family’s lives forever. Jonathan, at the age of 21, has been fatally attacked. A period of grief, and reconstruction follows, as Gunnar – who had separated from Jonathan’s mom – gets back together with her.
Speaking to Variety about his experience, Hall Jensen says: “Three weeks before filming was completed [in November 2023] I got the message parents fear the most: Jonathan – 21 years old – was killed. After the shocking news, I really just wanted to die myself. It was too much. Jonathan’s beautiful nature had been cut, taken out of the world at a young age.
“Something in me had been broken that could not be fixed. I know most parents that lose a child feel that way. But paradoxically one keeps on breathing. And after the first months of logistics from hell, I clearly saw that the film had to be completed, with the horror of my son’s death included. I saw it as a duty towards Jonathan, and also as a duty towards the audience out there.
“Firstly, it is representative of the love between a son and a father, how difficult and rewarding it can be.
“Secondly, I also saw the film as a relevant representation of the times we’re living in and the [inherent] dangers. How easy it is for a young man to get lost in today’s chaotic world with twisted ideas of how to succeed and become rich, promoted problematically by today’s gurus, coaches, influencers on the internet.
“Thirdly, we have an overload of books and films around mother/daughter relationships, but very few authentic stories about fathers and sons.”
To complete the film, going through the footage of his son was very hard, says Hall Jensen, and it involved “a lot of tears and agony.” However, the filmmaker developed a method.
“Daytime, going through the material, I shut off my emotions as a father as much as possible. I observed the material as a filmmaker. I forced myself to be professional telling a story in the best way possible. Then, in the evening, I took a couple of glasses of wine, and broke down. All the beautiful memories I had seen during the day hit me hard. It was meltdown! My wife often found me in the home office crying, helpless in the dark. She wondered why I did this to myself.”
Two people were crucial in helping Hall Jensen structure his narrative and find the right tone: his long-time editor Erlend Haarr Eriksson, and BBC Storyville’s commissioning editor Lucie Kon, who had boarded the project at an early stage via the film’s sales agent DR Sales.
“Lucy had bought a personal film about a father and son trying to connect. Then after the tragedy, I decided to move on with the film and to include the tragedy and what led to it. Lucie stayed on board, full on,” Hall Jensen says. “It was hard for me to change the film from an artistically playful and light-footed documentary into a more explanatory work, but Lucy helped a lot, both in taking out scenes that now seemed irrelevant, with sharpening the story in a more explanatory way and with going heavily into the voice-over narration. I am deeply grateful to her. She helped lift the film to a level I could not have done myself.”
One of the challenges in the script, was to decide when to announce the shocking news to the audience. Hall Jensen says long discussions on the subject were had with Haarr Eriksson and Kon. There were two choices, says the director: either he would tell the tragedy as the story unfolds, chronologically, or he would do this at the beginning, an option he went for. Not only was that the natural way to tell the story from his perspective as a narrator, aware of the tragic events, but that was also a way to grab the audience’s attention, hence his decision as well to insert reminders of the tragedy through the voice over at various intervals. That said, as the director points out, the film is “in no way some kind of true crime story” as it’s first and foremost “a story about a father and son, trying to connect.”
“Being a decent father is a tough ride,” says Hall Jensen, who recalls his son as “an unstoppable force of nature.” “I don’t have solutions, but I hope this father and son story will resonate with the audience. I also wish to warn other parents of the dangers of the internet, and the need to monitor children and teenagers,” he adds.
Kim Christiansen, executive producer, in charge of documentaries and co-production at DR Sales, praises Hall Jensen’s achievement. “It’s incredible how Gunnar has managed to complete the film and we’re extremely proud to present ‘Portrait of a Confused Father’ for both the industry and especially the audience at the world premiere at CPH:DOX. Despite the tragic outcome, it is important to state that this is the most beautiful father and son love story I have ever came across, in any genre.”
The film is produced by Norway’s top banner Upnorth Film, credited for Hall Jensen’s previous film “Oh, It Hertz!“ (CPH:DOX, 2021), Håvard Bustnes’ festival hits “Phantoms of the Sierra Madre,” and “Two Raging Grannies.”
The film is produced by Ingrid Aune Falch, Christian Aune Falch and Torstein Parelius at UpNorth Film, and is being co-produced by Valérie Montmartin and Anders Justin for France’s Little Big Story and Sweden’s Film Väsernorrland, with Kon at BBC Storyville. Jan Rofekamp and Freddy Neumann serve as executive producers.
Following its screenings at CPH:DOX, the documentary will be released theatrically by Norsk Filmdistribusjon in Norway in August 2025 before a TV launch on NRK in Norway, Yle in Finland, DR in Denmark, SVT in Sweden, RTS in Switzerland, BBC in the U.K. and France Télévisions.
