A Nation's Wake-Up Call: 'The Murder of Benjamin' Closes Haugesund Film Festival
A Norwegian film about the country's first racially motivated murder will close the 54th Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, bringing a 25-year-old tragedy back into the national conversation.
The Murder of Benjamin (Norwegian title: Drapet på Benjamin Hermansen) reconstructs the 2001 killing of Benjamin Hermansen, a 15-year-old boy born to a Norwegian mother and a Ghanaian father who was stabbed to death by neo-Nazis in Oslo. Director Ingvild Søderlind told Variety the killing was "a wake-up call for the whole nation."
Søderlind structures the film around three perspectives: Benjamin himself, his killers, and his mother Marit Hermansen, who fought for a fair trial and became an anti-racism activist before her death in 2019. The director, who is white, said she deliberately took on Marit's point of view because the film addresses racism directly. "Members of the Oslo neo-Nazi movement in the 1990s announced themselves as 'the protectors of the society,'" Søderlind told Variety — a framing the film interrogates by giving the killers their own narrative thread.
Elikem Leon Akpan plays Benjamin. Laila Goody portrays Marit. Magnús Blöndal Jóhannson plays the boy responsible for Benjamin's death. The film is produced by Thomas Robsahm of Nordisk Film Production, with international sales handled by TrustNordisk, which describes it as "a moving and timely drama" based on real events TrustNordisk.
The path to the screen was not smooth. Søderlind said the film was difficult to fund until she joined forces with Robsahm, a veteran producer whose credits include the Nordic hit Lovable. Production was scheduled to begin in September 2024, according to Variety. The project was announced as a new Nordisk Film production in August 2025 TrustNordisk, Facebook.
The hostility the film addresses has followed the production itself. After the trailer was released, the film team experienced hate online and had to remove offensive comments from their channels. That the subject still provokes this kind of reaction underscores why Søderlind persisted with the project despite the funding difficulties.
Haugesund, held annually on Norway's western coast, serves as a key industry showcase for Nordic cinema. Closing-night placement is a deliberate signal from festival programmers — the film a festival chooses to end on tends to be the one it wants audiences and industry delegates to carry home with them. The Murder of Benjamin was confirmed as the closing gala film in early August Variety.
For a film about a killing that shocked Norway in 2001, the choice to close a major festival in 2026 puts the story in front of the international buyers and festival programmers who decide which films travel beyond their borders. TrustNordisk will be looking to translate that platform into distribution deals across territories.
