A mural of a badger in a green sweater with a fork on its head is painted on a wall beneath a sign that reads PARKERING FORBUDT in Oslo, Norway.
Two great crested grebes with ornate head feathers and long necks swim side by side on a calm body of water near Oslo, facing each other.
Two beavers with brown fur are sitting on the grassy, muddy bank of a pond near Oslo, surrounded by reeds and tree branches, with their reflections visible in the water.

Oslo – The Wild Heart of Norway

Nature & Wildlife·1 x 50 min·In Production

Not a film about people — a film about the wild lives woven through Norway’s capital, where city and wilderness collide

Factsheet
Genre
Nature & Wildlife
Duration
1 × 50 min
Definition
4K
Audio
5.1
Status
In Production
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Synopsis

The Wild Heart of Norway is a cinematic documentary set entirely in Oslo, Norway’s capital. Yet it is not a film about people. It’s about the animals — wolves, foxes, badgers, moose, peregrine falcons, salmon, mink, and beavers — that thrive in the seams of city life.

At the centre of it all flows the river. Winding through neighbourhoods, past tramlines and under bridges, Oslo’s river becomes the film’s spine — a corridor of connection and transformation. Along its banks and beneath its surface, the city’s wild residents converge.

Beavers build their lodges here, fortresses of wood and memory crafted together. By night, they patrol its waters, slapping tails when people get too close. In the early morning hours, they court their mates beneath apartment lights. Further downstream, salmon leap, defying concrete barriers, returning with ancient urgency. Mink slip between rocks, fast but elusive. The river pulses with life, yet it is much older than the streets that now surround it.

This is not wilderness as exile — it is wilderness as neighbour. A moose appears in a snowy garden, steam curling from its nostrils as it nibbles fallen apples. Foxes, bold and blazing, streak through alleyways and playgrounds, stealing sausages and teaching their kits to survive, diving beneath park benches. Badgers tunnel under flowerbeds and fences, transforming Oslo’s suburbs into subterranean empires. These creatures don’t pass through the city — they live within it.

Above it all, a peregrine falcon: She perches on an office tower, watching. Then she dives — 300 km/h of silent precision — striking through the skyline. Her prey: the pigeons that flutter through courtyards and rooftops. The city itself becomes her hunting ground, a vertical savannah of steel and shadow.

Beyond the last tram stop, wolves roam the forests that encircle Oslo. They are silent, spectral, and almost mythic. Their presence is known more than seen — etched in hoof marks and whispered in the stillness of the trees. They are not intruders. They are neighbours, woven into the city’s living edge.

As the seasons change, Oslo’s wild symphony shifts. Winter reveals glyphs in the snow; spring bursts with blossoms and birdsong; summer nights hum with bats beneath streetlights; and autumn smells of wet leaves and damp earth. From herons in misty wetlands to squirrels leaping between rooftops, Oslo pulses with untamed life.

OSLO – THE WILD HEART OF NORWAY is not a nostalgic film. It does not mourn a world we’ve lost — it reveals one we’ve ignored. Oslo is not the edge of nature. It is nature, reshaped and reframed.

The river flows through it all, tying these wild stories together. It is a thread of memory and movement, a reminder that the wilderness never left the city — we simply stopped seeing it.

Team

Written and directed by Alex Sletten
Executive Producers Birgit Peters, Sabine Holzer
Production companies A Terra Mater Studios / Story Surge Films production
Footage rights

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