Elsa Kvamme has been an active part of Norwegian cultural life since the 1970s. She began as an acting student at the now world famous Odin Teatret, and subsequently founded Saltkompagniet, one of the first independent theatre groups in Norway. She was one of the first in Norway to perform experimental solo shows and cabarets, translating Jacques Brel to Norwegian and performing her own songs, before she In the 1990s attended film school in New York. Kvamme has received several Norwegian and international awards for her works, including the Amanda award for Best screenplay (Fia!, 2004) og The Golden Chair for Best documentary (The Doctors’ War, 2011). She started making documentaries to learn more about her father Elling Kvamme’s war-time experiences. She has made four films about the horrors of Nazism and the survivors’ dilemmas (Students at War, part 1 and 2; A Lady with a Hat, The Doctors’ War, The Tram to Auschwitz), before focusing on people and actions which «made a difference» in the fight against indifference and destruction.

These films, which now have become a trilogy about counter-forces, are The Art of the Impossible (2017), about the Italian-Norwegian-Danish theater pioneer Eugenio Barba and how a tiny theatre can become an international driving force, and The Rebellion School (2018), about the Experimental High School of Oslo – an unique experiment in learning and developing democracy within a school system. And finally, Sorry Brothers, I Was the One (2019); about the poet and activist Jan Erik Vold.