My First Love

Ella is 19 years old, has lived her entire life in a wheelchair, and is now about to move away from home to study for the very first time. She is full of anticipation and looks forward to a new city and orientation week. When she learns that the municipality she is moving to will not provide her with a user-controlled personal assistant, but instead wants to place her in a care institution, she is nonetheless determined not to postpone her studies. She juggles lectures, parties, and a new crush with the rigid rules of the institution while waiting for the appeal of the municipality's decision to be processed.

Director Mari Storstein is a wheelchair user herself and offers an authentic depiction of what it is like to live with disabilities in Norway through this film. With this beautiful, yet political, love drama, she aims to combat lack of representation and ingrained stereotypes. The fact that this is the first Norwegian feature fiction film with a wheelchair user in the lead role perhaps says something about the state of the film industry.