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A book on The Worst Person in the World, Joachim Trier, and his other films (ebook): Existential detours

The first book on the films of Joachim Trier

Pre-order discount: $49.99 $29.99

An essential companion to Oscar Nominee The Worst Person in the World and Joachim Trier’s work, full of interviews and critical insights that demystify Trier’s creative process.

Pre-order now

Ebook Release Date: Late 2023

This is an ebook, not a physical book. It will be delivered to your email as a PDF and ePub on release.

Ebook cover of the book on Joachim Trier and The Worst Person in the World, Existential detours: Joachim Trier's cinema of indecisions and revisions

Renate Reinsve in focus: An in-depth interview with the lead of The Worst Person in the World

A collage of stills from The Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve, in front of a purple and pink patterned background, from the chapter in the Joachim Trier book Existential detours.

Renate Reinsve won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival in July.

Read the book excerpt

Why we wrote the book on Joachim Trier

About

Existential detours

Existential detours: Joachim Trier’s cinema of indecisions and revisions offers the first in-depth, 360-degree look at Trier’s process through interviews with Trier himself and his collaborators in front of and behind the camera on The Worst Person in the World — including co-writer Eskil Vogt, actors Anders Danielsen Lie and Renate Reinsve — and beyond. 

Combining interviews with critical essays and writing, this collection will help you discover Trier’s interests, talents, and achievements — and the importance of his collaborators. It’s the key to unlock what makes his work so absorbing and unforgettable. 

Erudite, casual, and easily accessible, Existential detours will be essential reading for fans of Trier’s work and a cornerstone for future Trier scholarship.

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Seventh Row recently named Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st the #1 film of the 2010s, and his latest films, The Worst Person in the World, the #2 film of 2021.

The new book Existential detours is the culmination of nearly a decade of scholarship on Joachim Trier’s work, so there’s nowhere better to look if you want to understand what makes Trier’s films tick.

We’ve been interviewing Trier and his collaborators in depth since 2015 for each of their films and were early champions of their work. Over the past seven years, we’ve built rapport and learned how to ask questions that elicit interesting, layered responses.

Why we’re the source for Joachim Trier criticism and analysis

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What’s inside the book Existential detours: Joachim Trier’s cinema of indecisions and revisions

Critical analysis of all of Joachim Trier’s films

Existential detours explores how Trier’s films tell stories about characters in the process of figuring themselves out through indecisions and revisions. The films also regularly challenge the audience’s assumptions about the characters through constantly offering new perspectives on them and their relationships.

Read close-text analysis of some of Trier’s best scenes across all of his films

There’s no better way to understand the visual and sound choices that bring Trier’s work to life than zeroing in on the mechanics of a single, great scene. Existential detours kicks off by reminding you of some of the highlights of Trier’s films and the connections between them in themes and style. Dive deep into the cafe scene in Oslo, August 31st, Conrad’s diary in Louder Than Bombs, the frozen sequence in The Worst Person in the World, and many more.

Dive into illuminating essays on each of Trier’s films.

You’ll come to better understand how Trier gets to the heart of the existential detours each of his characters take in order to understand themselves. You’ll find new reasons to love Trier’s films and better articulate what you already love. Because the essays are also deeply rooted in analysing how Trier uses film form to tell stories, you’ll also get a sense of how film form can be used to get inside characters’ heads. Read all about how Thelma is more than a modern Carrie, depression and disconnection in Louder Than Bombs, and variatons on a romantic theme in The Worst Person in the World.

Interviews with Joachim Trier’s core creative team in the book

Through interviews with the actors, co-writer, and Trier himself…

  • Joachim Trier
  • Co-writer Eskil Vogt
  • Actor Anders Danielsen Lie (Reprise, Oslo, August 31st, The Worst Person in the World)
  • Actor Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World)
  • Actor Herbert Nordrum (The Worst Person in the World)
  • Actor Eili Harboe (Thelma)

You’ll discover… how the people at the centre of all of Trier’s films think about and analyse their films, in order to bring them to life, and how this feeds their collaborations.

Through interviews with Trier’s heads of departments…

  • Production designer Jørgen Stangebye Larsen (Oslo, August 31st)
  • Sound designer Gisle Tveito and composer Ola Fløttum who have both worked on all of the films

You’ll discover… the craftspeople working behind the scenes who make Trier’s films happen, and dream up the details that bring them to life. You’ll come to realise why every little detail counts when creating these characters’ worlds. You’ll also gain a new and broader understanding of all of the crafts that go into making a film more generally and how crucial these can be to telling stories.

Discover exclusive behind-the-scenes artifacts from the films of Joachim Trier in the book

In addition to in-depth interviews with the filmmakers, the book will take you behind the scenes, visually, with photos from the set, as well as excerpts from the scripts and storyboards.

  • Shot list from part of the frozen sequence of The Worst Person in the World
  • Photographs from the recce from part of the frozen sequence of The Worst Person in the World.
  • Floorplan for some of the shots from part of the frozen sequence of The Worst Person in the World, featured in the Joachim Trier book Existential detours
  • Behind the scenes on the set of Thelma, with Eili Harboe (right) at the swimming pool
  • Renate Reinsve under innspillingen av Verdens verste menneske i Barcode/Bjørvika i Oslo. Joachim Trier og fotograf Kasper Tuxen bak. 14.08.2020
  • Excerpt from the script of The Worst Person in the World frozen sequence, by Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt

Praise for our books

I can’t recommend Roads to Nowhere enough

“A book that celebrates the auteur that is Reichardt without erasing the collectivity of making movies… This is a book about making films, but it’s also about watching cinema, experiencing its refracted perspectives, and going into the imagination of others. 

As a Kelly Reichardt fan, I can’t recommend it enough and hope that, if you do venture into its pages of knowledge and discovery, you can find as much joy as I did…one sometimes feels alone in their cinephilia. Roads to Nowhere assures us, at least it assured me, that we’re not lonesome after all.”

– Cláudio Alves, The Film Experience

Breathtaking in its insight

“Once again, the Seventh Row team of Alex Heeney and Orla Smith have collaborated on a book that is breathtaking in its insight.

Roads to Nowhere: Kelly Reichardt’s Broken American Dreams follows the release of what might be the director’s finest work to date, First Cow.

While there is plenty here about the early 1800s-set Cow, Reichardt’s entire career is represented….Reichardt deserves this sterling tribute, and readers will gain even greater appreciation for her work.”

-Christopher Schobert, The Film Stage

Screen Anarchy

A cornerstone for future Sciamma scholarship

“Portraits of Resistance covers enormous ground, reading Sciamma’s work as queer cinema, women’s cinema, European cinema, looking at the both the stories and the aesthetics, and how Sciamma has already created distinct and unique films with a singular voice.

Not only is it a great introduction for any who want to learn more about the filmmaker, it will be a cornerstone for any future Sciamma scholarship.”

– Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Screen Anarchy

Listen to the book’s editors discuss Joachim Trier

Ep. 112: Raw and Thelma: Modern female monsters

Ep. 107: Another Round and Oslo, August 31st: Are men OK? Masculinity, mental health, & addiction Redux

Ep. 40: Stories We Tell, Louder Than Bombs, & Mouthpiece: Dead mothers

Ep. 122: Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World

How to buy Existential detours: Joachim Trier’s cinema of indecisions and revisions

Pre-order now, and the book will be delivered to you as soon as it’s released.

As soon as you pre-order, you also get access to several excerpts from the book. In the months leading up to the book’s release, we will continue to send additional excerpts/chapters to book buyers via email.

The ebook will be delivered to you as both an ePub and PDF, which are readable on all tablets, smart phones, and eReaders.

Purchase the ebook now to lock in the price of $29.99 USD. When the book is released, the book will increase in price to its street price of $49.99 USD.

Pre-order now
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