Forgiveness is a complicated word… It does not remove the wound, but it can stop the wound from controlling the rest of your life.” — Filmmaker Nefise Özkal Lorentzen on her documentary This Is Not an Apple
Fresh from its World Premiere at Nordisk Panorama Film Festival, This Is Not an Apple follows brothers Reda and Yahya in the wake of a violent stabbing as they carry trauma, anger, and a heavy expectation of vengeance. In her moving new documentary, Turkish-Norwegian director Nefise Özkal Lorentzen tracks their journey through the Oslo-based community project Líf Laga, where apple farming becomes a quiet vehicle for processing grief, finding purpose, and ultimately stepping inside Ullersmo high-security prison to plant trees alongside inmates.
We sat down with Nefise to discuss how her understanding of forgiveness evolved during filming, what happened when two stabbing survivors planted an orchard behind prison walls, and why the simple act of caring for something living can redefine rehabilitation.
Nordic Watchlist: The film centres on forgiveness rather than vengeance. How did your understanding of forgiveness evolve while following Reda and Yahya’s journey?
Nefise Özkal Lorentzen: Forgiveness is a complicated word. Sometimes we speak about it as if it were a beautiful and simple solution, but it is not. This film is not telling people that they must forgive, whatever has happened to them. You cannot demand forgiveness from the person who has been hurt.
With Reda and Yahya, I saw that forgiveness did not come in one big moment. First, they had to feel their anger and disappointment. They had to find words for these feelings and talk about them with each other and with their family. Later, moving to another city gave them some distance. They could concentrate on school and on the kind of lives they wanted to build. For them, stepping away was not cowardice. It was a way of stopping the anger from deciding what they would become.
Their mother was very important. She was their moral compass. Through her faith, she reminded them that forgiveness does not mean forgetting justice or pretending that nothing happened. She asked them to think about what they would do with their own power when revenge was possible.
The young man who stabbed them is never seen in the film, but he is present all the time, almost like a shadow. When the brothers understood that he regretted what he had done and was trying to change, they faced a very difficult question: What do you do when the person who harmed you is trying not to be that person anymore? They began to wonder whether rejecting his repentance might keep all of them trapped inside the original crime.
Then they went into Ullersmo Prison and planted apple trees with people who had harmed others. There was something almost paradoxical about it: two young men who had been victims of violence were creating something beautiful for people who had committed crimes. Forgiveness was no longer only an idea. It became something physical—working with the soil, planting trees and making life a little better for people they did not know.
I am no longer sure that forgiveness is something you complete. Perhaps it is something you practise. It does not remove the wound, but it can stop the wound from controlling the rest of your life.
Nordic Watchlist: The brothers are remarkably reflective and philosophical about their past and present lives. What was it about their conversations that convinced you they should become the focus of the documentary?
Nefise Özkal Lorentzen: At first, I wanted to make a film about ecology and immigrant youth, because they are so often described only through the problems they are believed to create. I wanted to show their solidarity, their relationships and the strength they found in one another.
Then I overheard Reda and Yahya talking about the court decision and the stabbing. At that point, I did not even know they were brothers. It took me some time to understand what I was hearing. Slowly, I realised that this conversation could become the heart of the film.
They were not simply telling each other what had happened. They were trying to understand it while they were speaking. I could hear them thinking. Their reflections were not neat or prepared, and that was what made them so interesting. They were asking themselves what the violence had done to them and what kind of men they wanted to become afterwards.
I did not want to conduct conventional interviews with them. Instead, I created situations, asked questions and then stepped back. I wanted their thoughts to develop between them rather than have them produce perfect answers for me or for the camera.
What fascinated me was the difference between the way society might see them and what was actually happening inside them. From the outside, they could appear to be tough young men, perhaps even “gangster boys.” But beneath that image, I saw vulnerability, tenderness and a serious struggle to understand themselves.
They were not protected middle-class boys discussing darkness from a safe distance. They had experienced that darkness themselves, and they had come back with questions. They could talk about anger and love, shame and pride, toughness and fear. Their philosophy did not come from books. It came from survival.
Young men like Reda and Yahya are often reduced to headlines, statistics or stereotypes. I wanted the audience to spend enough time with them to see the human beings behind the armour. For me, this is also connected to rehabilitation. Before someone can move forward, they need to be seen as more than the worst thing they have done or the worst thing that has happened to them.
Nordic Watchlist: The scenes involving the inmates at Ullersmo Prison are particularly powerful. Were there any interactions during filming that fundamentally changed your perspective on rehabilitation and second chances?
Nefise Özkal Lorentzen: What changed me was not one dramatic confession. It was watching what happened around a very simple activity.
When we first arrived, the area where we were going to plant was incredibly dirty. There were cigarette butts, leftover food and soiled toilet paper everywhere. You could feel anger in the way the place had been treated. It was not a poetic beginning.
While we were planting, some inmates who were not part of the project shouted strange things at us. But gradually, they understood that these young people, many of them from immigrant backgrounds, had not come to judge them or tell them how to live. They had come to create something beautiful for them.
Later, when the apple trees began to blossom, prison officers told me that some inmates cried when they heard the bees and saw butterflies. These were such small things, but some of them had not experienced them for years. That moved me much more than any grand speech about rehabilitation.
And believe me, the little orchard in the middle of the prison is now completely clean. There is not a single cigarette butt or piece of toilet paper around it. For me, that says everything. The inmates began to protect something because they felt that it had also been created for them.
We often talk about rehabilitation as something experts do to people who have committed crimes. At Ullersmo, I saw that it can also happen when people are trusted to do something meaningful with others. The brothers and the inmates planted trees together. For a while, nobody was only “the victim” or “the offender.” They were simply people doing a job together and putting something living into the earth.
This does not mean easy forgiveness, and it does not remove responsibility. A second chance requires people to face the harm they have caused. But change also needs an opening. Sometimes someone has to make the first gesture without knowing what will come back. Not unconditional forgiveness, but perhaps an unconditional act of care.
Planting a tree inside a prison also says something very simple: there will be a future. The person planting it may never sit beneath it or eat its fruit, but someone else will. That changed the way I thought about rehabilitation. It is not one dramatic moment when a person suddenly becomes “good.” It is built slowly, through responsibility, repetition, trust and care.
Nordic Watchlist: This Is Not an Apple uses apple farming as both a practical activity and a powerful metaphor. What does the orchard ultimately represent to you, both as a filmmaker and as a human being?
Nefise Özkal Lorentzen: I have had a long and slightly strange relationship with apples.
In A Balloon for Allah, which is part of my trilogy about Islam and gender, I explored sin, the power of knowledge and the apple that Eve is said to have given Adam. I bought an apple tree and filmed it in the middle of Oslo while thinking about the so-called original sin and why Eve is still carrying so much of the blame. I also brought together leaders from the three Abrahamic religions to plant an apple tree.
My sons think I have some issues with apples. Perhaps they are right. I have been following this symbol for a long time.
Magritte has also influenced me. I love the way he could take a very ordinary object and suddenly make us uncertain about what we were looking at. The title This Is Not an Apple is partly a conversation with that idea. The apple is real, of course, but it is also carrying everything we do not say directly: violence, guilt, knowledge, temptation, forgiveness and the possibility of beginning again.
At the same time, I do not want the orchard to become only a poetic metaphor. The young people and the inmates did real physical work. They touched the soil, planted the trees and later heard the bees arrive. Something actually changed in that place.
As a filmmaker, the orchard reminds me of making a documentary. You plant something, but you do not know exactly what will grow. You observe, you wait, and sometimes the story moves in a direction you could never have planned. You cannot force a tree to produce fruit, just as you cannot force a person to forgive or change.
As a human being, the orchard represents a form of hope, but hope with dirt under its fingernails. It is not innocent or romantic. A tree needs pruning, patience, discipline and care. The orchard does not pretend that winter never happened. It carries the damage and still continues to grow.
Its roots remain inside the prison, while its branches reach towards the sky. One day, its fruit may be eaten by people whom those who planted the trees will never meet.
Maybe that is why I keep returning to the apple. It can carry shame and knowledge, a fall and a new beginning, all at the same time. And perhaps forgiveness is also like that. It does not remove what happened. It allows something else to grow beside it.
This Is Not An Apple had its World Premiere last night at Nordisk Panorama Film Festival! For the full festival schedule and ticket information, visit the official website click HERE
