Insomnia

Two Swedish detectives travel to a small town in northern Norway, above the Arctic Circle, to assist local police with the murder of a seventeen-year-old girl. The older, more experienced investigator, Jonas Engström, devises a plan to catch the killer, but the stakeout goes wrong in the fog: while chasing the suspect, Engström accidentally shoots his own colleague, Erik Vik. The killer escapes, and Engström hides what he did, placing the blame on the fugitive.

As he keeps up the hunt, the endless polar daylight robs him of sleep and his guilt wears away at his judgement. The killer, who saw what happened, uses that knowledge against him. Stellan Skarsgård plays Engström, with Sverre Anker Ousdal as Vik, Bjørn Floberg as Jon Holt and Maria Mathiesen as Tanja Lorentzen among the cast.

Insomnia is the feature debut of Norwegian director Erik Skjoldbjærg, who wrote the screenplay with Nikolaj Frobenius; his later films include Prozac Nation, Pioneer and Narvik. The film runs 96 minutes. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from around 17,000 votes, and on TMDB 7 out of 10 from roughly 335 votes. A critics' score of 7.7 out of 10 from 42 reviews places it slightly above those audience figures.