About this film
  

The documentary film For harde livet! (For Your Life)

Sigve Endresen released in 1989 the feature length documentary For Your Life (For harde livet) for theatrical distribution. The subject for this film was a treatment program for young drug addicts. Endresen and his team followed a group of Norwegian youths participating in the program through a period of one-and-a-half year. The documentary did suprisingly well at the box office and was some years later presented on national TV with a follow-up program centering on the main protagonists of the movie and how they had fared afterwards.

The treatment program in question, named "The Tyrili Treatment" after the place in the mountains near Lillehammer in Southern Norway where the treatment takes place, was, and is, highly controversial in Norway. Dedicated and highly motivated curators live with their clients through a year of physical hardship as well as intense group therapy sessions and a main point in the program is the principle of forced participation as opposed to the majority of drug rehabilitation programs that are based on voluntary participation. This fact has made it possible for convicts to serve part of their sentence as participants in the program.
The controversy around the Tyril treatment is based on the element of force and has been continuously debated in Norway and other Scandinavian countries where the model is used. One reason for this is obviously the recovery rate, which is about 50% and considerable higher than with other comparable methods of treatment for drug abuse.

For Your Life starts in seedy slum apartments in Oslo, where juvenile protection officers search for youths who are supposed to take part in the program but who haven't turned up. They are found and brought to a juvenile delinquency house where the first part of the treatment starts. A week later the members of the group find themselves in the mountains on cross country skis for the initiation course to Tyrili. They are forced into a life of outdoor activities and shared responsibilities in doing household chores and are subjected to their first sessions of group therapy with the aim to break down the "old" personality and lay the foundations for a new.
The initiaton ends with an arduous week long ski trek through the mountains, sleeping in primitive huts and spending one night in a tent in the snow.
During this part the viewers become acquainted with the outspoken girl Lone, who more or less takes up the position as main protagonist in the documentary. Through several interviews we get an idea of her personal history and background and details about her life as a teenage heroin addict on the streets of Oslo.
At Tyrili the first action of the new inhabitants is to burn their old clothes and belongings in a ceremonial manifestation of the start of a new life. We now follow Lone and her pals through group discussions, various forms of physical work and a number of challenging outdoor activities like rafting, skiing and mountaineering. The documentary avoids painting a rosy picture of the development, many of the young addicts are obviously unmotivated for the change, and predictably have relapses. One client runs away to Oslo, is found and returned and is taken on a week´s wilderness hike with two of the curators in an attempt to bring back the motivation.
Lone breaks off the treatment and runs away, but after a time she comes back, begging to be accepted for another attempt at Tyrili. In the last part of the documentary we meet her again, with a new batch of young addicts, in the initiation course in the mountains. This time she manages to make it to the top of the mountain she failed to scale the first time. This is, however, no film with a happy ending. Soon we find Lone back on the streets of Oslo, providing the film with an open ending as a new cycle of treatment at Tyrli starts. Some will manage to break the evil circle of drug abuse, many will fail, as in Lone´s case.
Endresen´s film is organised according to the year cycle at Tyrili and relies heavily on observational and interactive techniques. Camera and sound recorder function as "fly on the wall" in the therapy sessions, but Endresen quietly acknowledges his and the camera team´s presence through occasional glimpses of the sound recordist (Endresen himself) or through questions posed onscreen to the protagonists and through Endresen´s occaisonal low-key off-screen commentary.

Source: http://www.hf.ntnu.no/ikm/bjornso/Bjornweb/Artikler/FYLife.html

Some documentary data:

• director - Sigve Endresen
• producer - Motlys A/S, Oslo
• sound - Sigve Endresen, Jan-Robert jore, Peik Borud
• photography - Hallgrim Ødegård, Svein Krøvel, Eric Arguillere, Ole Fredrik Haug
• editing - Hans Otto Nicolaysen, Malte Wadman
• production - Aage Aaberge, Svein H. Toreg
• music - Knut Reiersrud
• musicians - Reidar Skaar, Audun Erlien, Paolo Vinaccia, Nils Einar Vinjor, Knut Reiersrud, Silje Nergaard
• released - 1989
• length - 101 min.
• awards - Norwegian Film Festival 1989: three Amanda's, for best documentary, best film and best edeting - Norwegian Federation of Cinema managers 1989: the Silver Clod (Sølvklumpen), for best Norwegian cinema film