Tommy Gulliksen: Facing War

Unique access to film is what is written in the festival press about the opening film of CPH:DOX 2025. Unique access to former General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg during his last year in that position. And this is what Gulliksen had to his compatriot, access. Example: Oh… I had forgotten that you would be here, Stoltenberg says a couple of times, when he enters the car waiting for him, to take him to the next meeting. Gulliksen is there with the camera and questions.

Actually, Stoltenberg entering cars and getting out of cars are the most used scenes in the film about the very sympathetic Norwegian diplomat, who wanted to end his Brussels career to come home to wife and family, but President Biden convinced him to take one more year of hard work.

Stoltenberg, a warmhearted man, goes to Kyiv, meets Zelenskyj – great scenes in the train(s) trips to Ukraine – good scenes with his advisors in the office in Brussels – Stoltenberg having breakfast quite alone in his NATO salon – Stoltenberg trying to make the Hungarian troublemaker, Putin-lover Orban, refrain from making trouble at one of big NATO meetings, where Stoltenberg aims for a unity FOR Ukraine.

The meetings and the themes discussed at them are well known and the film structure is a classic cinéma vérité style, it’s a well known built visual monument of a great statesman, a diplomat indeed, but how close do we really get to him – yes, once, with archive from the emotional and intelligent speech Stoltenberg made in 2011 to commemorate the victims of Utøya. Now he is Minister of Finances in Norway… Does that give him more of the rest, he deserves after NATO and the eternal traveling…

Norway, Belgium, 2025, 100 mins.