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IN FOCUS: Everything You Love
DQ . Spring 2022
LOVE & HATE Writer Marie Hafting and producer Kaia Foss reveal their voyage into the world of far-right extremism with Alt du Elsker (Everything You Love), the story of a young couple in love and the secret that threatens to tear them apart.
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he journey to making Norwegian drama Alt du Elsker (Everything You Love) began with a single question: why do people turn to extremism and commit horrendous acts of terror? In Norway, it’s a question that came to the fore after a number of terrorist attacks in recent years, most notably in 2011 when Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people. But when writer Marie Hafting first discussed the idea with Nora Ibrahim, head of development at The Oslo Company, she decided she didn’t just want to write about extremism. Instead, she wanted to blend that subject with something that was warm, funny and intriguing. “Then we said, ‘What about a love story?’” Hafting tells DQ. “A guy and a girl fall in love and then she discovers he is a far-right extremist. Because we have this history with terror in Norway, it was very important for us
to say something true about extremism and find out how young people get radicalised. But we also wanted to tell a human story, not one just about a crazy guy we all hate.” The resulting Discovery+ series tells a story of love and radicalisation through the eyes of a young girl in love and a boy on the edge of something much darker. The seven-parter opens when childhood friends Sara and Jonas reunite on the Oslo Metro. Romance soon blossoms between the couple, but what Sara doesn’t know is that Jonas is being radicalised by a far-right extremist group. His search for like-minded people online contrasts with his relationship with Sara, but the longer he tries to lead a double life, the deeper he falls into his new community. Then Sara discovers Jonas’s dark secret. Development first began two years ago, when Hafting and Ibrahim began sketching out some preliminary ideas and structures for the show. Over the past 12 months, they and fellow