Aside from Beate Støfring, who plays Sara’s big sister Ingrid, none of the other four of the young leads, including Bergsholm, Bjørhovde, Matias Myren (Artur) and Lars Nordtveit Listau (Sara’s boyfriend Kjartan) had even been in a high school play.

Of the three others in the lead roles, was the only member of the young cast who had studied acting. Another amateur, Hilde-Gunn Ommedal, who plays the nosy neighbor Magda, was found through an article on a local TV website. While Systad Jacobsen and casting agent Michelsen tried to find the adult cast from the same geographical area, they ended up looking further afield for most of the roles. The only professional actress actually from the area is Julie Bache-Wiig, who plays Maria. Henriette Steenstrup (Alma’s mother) and Jon Bleiklie Devik (Sebjørn) are both theatre actors, and Steenstrup is also a well-known comedienne, appearing on the Norwegian version of “Saturday Night Live.” Steenstrup and Devik and other actors from out of town had to learn how to speak in the Sogn og Fjordane dialect.

Systad Jacobsen began working with her young actors by discussing the script and the characters and creating their physical specifics, as well as understanding the characters’ way of thinking. When the shooting started, she and Helene rehearsed and tried out things in advance which were difficult or tricky, particularly scenes involving anything sexual. Only she, cinematographer Marianne Bakke, and the sound recordist were present for any scenes that involved sexual content. (For the record, the penis in the movie is a prosthetic and Bergsholm’s nude scene was done by a double.) “In the beginning of the process of filming I thought it was very scary and I was very nervous,” says Bergsholm. “But now I’m very happy I did it. As things went along it got better and better and easier and easier… in the end I just thought it was fun to do difficult scenes and challenging scenes.”

To elicit natural performances, Systad Jacobsen didn’t ask her young actors to learn their lines by heart and only used the script as a tool on the set. “They are in a certain sense typecast, but if you met them in real life, they’re not the same as you see them in the film,” says Systad Jacobsen. “We did a lot of things that would help them feel like they’re not themselves. Malin, for example, was given a bad, kind of Ozzy Osbourne posture.” Says Bjørhovde: “It was a really safe environment on set. Everybody was friends and we didn’t stress. It became like hanging out with friends... with a camera.” While filming the opening scene was daunting, Bergsholm was more relaxed about romantic scenes with Matias Myren (Artur) than ones in which she had to yell, as she wasn’t accustomed to doing that. “It was good because when she had difficulty doing something she would come up with creative solutions herself,” says Systad Jacobsen.

The low-key, naturalistic style of the acting came from Systad Jacobsen’s background as a documentary filmmaker, where she had a lot of experience filming real people. The goal was to portray the teenagers in a way that was as authentic as possible.