Welcome to Utmark

[HBO] "Welcome to Utmark" may be one of the less commercial series that HBO has released this year, but it has an undeniable capacity for attraction, along with a splendid staging underlined by the excellent work of cinematographer Andreas Johannessen, who shines much more than in the "Unge lovende" series (NRK, 2015-). And it introduces elements that are not superficial at all, such as the confrontation between Heige (Marius Lien) and Finn (the almost essential in the recent Norwegian production Tobias Santelmann), which connects directly with the feeling of grievance of the indigenous Sami community against racial and religious colonization, which is present in rural areas of the Scandinavian countries. We could almost say that this community of unique characters describes rural Norway before the discovery of oil, whose isolation was positive and negative at the same time. And it is capable of using dark humor to squeeze to the limit the primitive roots of the human being, in a story that progressively becomes darker.