Quick, name your favorite movie from Norway. If nothing immediate comes to mind it is because very few Norwegian films get imported to the U.S. and the few that do are usually art house fare that play to niche audiences in the major cities. Regardless of that, Norway has had a thriving film industry for years and a few filmmakers have developed international reputations such as Morten Tyldum, who was Oscar nominated for Best Director for The Imitation Game (2014) starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the British mathematical genius Alan Turing, and Joachim Trier, whose 2021 movie The Worst Person in the World received Academy Award nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay. One of the few exceptions to the above is Orions Belte (English title: Orion’s Belt, 1985), which is considered Norway’s first contemporary action thriller and the biggest box office success in its own country for years. It also won critical acclaim and garnered numerous industry awards in Norway even though Orion’s Belt is essentially a B-movie thriller. Still, the lean, stripped-down narrative, based on Jon Michelet’s 1977 novel (the screenplay is by Richard Harris), and Hollywood-style production values transformed this audience-pleasing genre exercise into something much more intriguing and thought-provoking.