Eili Harboe: Life After ‘Thelma’ on Norway’s Indie-Film Path

Eili Harboe: Life After ‘Thelma’ on Norway’s Indie-Film Path

In 2017, a twenty-three-year-old from Stavanger carried one of the most demanding roles in recent Norwegian cinema: Thelma, Joachim Trier’s supernatural drama about a sheltered young woman whose repressed emotions manifest as terrifying psychokinetic power. Eili Harboe’s performance — lonely, trembling, then quietly volcanic — anchored a film that became Norway’s Oscar entry and drew rapturous notices from Variety, IndieWire and The Hollywood Reporter. It was the kind of breakout that usually launches a very predictable career. Harboe chose a different one.

The breakout that could have gone Hollywood

Thelma premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, played Fantastic Fest and the New York Film Festival, and was picked up for the US by distributor The Orchard. For its young lead, the runway was clear: English-language genre films, streaming leads, the standard post-festival circuit. Harboe, who holds degrees in art history from the University of Oslo and English literature from the University of Stavanger, seemed built for the arthouse world — but the industry assumed she would cash the breakout in for something bigger and safer.

She did not. The decade after Thelma reads like a deliberate counter-programming exercise: a career built on interesting choices rather than visible ones.

The arthouse years: horror, shorts and strange corners

Harboe’s post-Thelma filmography favours the small, the dark and the distinctly Norwegian. She took the lead in Projekt Z (2021), Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s zombie feature — a genre pivot that kept her in horror but on home turf. She headlined Nightmare (2022), Kjersti Helen Rasmussen’s feature, doubling down on the dark psychological territory where she is strongest. She appeared in Beforeigners, HBO Nordic’s acclaimed time-travel series, and in 2024 in Invitation to Self-Examination, Paul Tunge’s handmade feature shot in the Norwegian woods — about as far from a studio production as cinema gets.

Her television work shows the same pattern of choosing texture over scale: The Architect (2023), The Fortress (2023), Kids in Crime (2024) — Norwegian series with distinct voices rather than international co-production showcases. Even her brush with the biggest show on television was characteristically low-key: a small role in HBO’s Succession in 2023, the kind of credit that suggests she is known to casting directors far beyond Norway without having chased them.

The Harry Hole moment

That may be about to change — on her own terms. Harboe is set to appear in Netflix’s Harry Hole series, the streaming giant’s adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s beloved crime novels, directed by Øystein Karlsen and Anna Zachrisson. It is the biggest production of her career by a wide margin, and the most mainstream. But it is telling that her route to a global platform ran through a Norwegian literary institution rather than a Hollywood casting office. She is arriving at scale as a Norwegian actress, not as an export.

Why the indie path matters

There is a version of the film industry in which a breakout like Thelma is a lottery ticket to be redeemed immediately. Harboe treated it as something else: a calling card for the kind of work she actually wanted to do. Her choices since — horror leads, woodland arthouse features, sharp Norwegian television — describe an actress building a body of work rather than a profile.

It is a slower road, and a braver one. The Norwegian film scene is small enough that every choice is visible, and Harboe has spent nearly a decade making choices that prioritise directors, scripts and strangeness over exposure. If the Netflix series makes her a familiar face to a global audience, it will be an audience meeting an actress with a decade of hard, interesting work behind her — not an overnight discovery, but a slow-burn arrival. Thelma was the introduction. Everything since has been the argument that she meant it.

The film that carried her

It helps to remember the scale of what Thelma was. Produced by Thomas Robsahm for Motlys with co-producers across Sweden, Denmark and France, the film carried a final budget of just over five million euros — substantial by Norwegian standards — and shot for forty-four days across Oslo and western Sweden. It became Norway’s official Oscar entry, was picked up for the United States by The Orchard after premiering at Toronto, and was pre-sold to nearly twenty territories including Italy, Japan and the Benelux countries.

The critical reception explains why the role still defines her. Variety called the film “breathtaking,” IndieWire found it “ominous, unnerving, and strangely powerful,” and The Hollywood Reporter praised it as “intelligent and elegant.” At the centre of it all was Harboe’s Thelma: a lonely, introverted Oslo student, raised by strict religious parents, whose unexplained seizures turn out to be the surface of something far stranger — psychokinetic abilities tied to repression, desire and memory. It is a role that asks its lead to be fragile and frightening in the same scene, sometimes in the same shot. Harboe, twenty-three and barely known, carried it. Every choice she has made since — the horror leads, the woodland arthouse features, the refusal to chase the obvious next step — reads as an actress who understood exactly what that performance had earned her, and declined to spend it cheaply.

Eili Harboe filmography: the decade after Thelma

Harboe’s post-Thelma career reads like a deliberate counter-programming exercise — interesting choices rather than visible ones. The key credits:

Thelma: key facts and numbers

It helps to remember the scale of what Thelma was. Produced by Thomas Robsahm for Motlys with co-producers across Sweden, Denmark and France, the film carried a final budget of just over five million euros — substantial by Norwegian standards — and shot for forty-four days across Oslo and western Sweden. It premiered at Toronto, played Fantastic Fest and the New York Film Festival, was picked up for the United States by The Orchard, and was pre-sold to nearly twenty territories including Italy, Japan and the Benelux countries.

The critical reception explains why the role still defines her. Variety called the film “breathtaking,” IndieWire found it “ominous, unnerving, and strangely powerful,” and The Hollywood Reporter praised it as “intelligent and elegant.” At the centre of it all was Harboe’s Thelma: a lonely, introverted Oslo student, raised by strict religious parents, whose unexplained seizures turn out to be the surface of something far stranger — psychokinetic abilities tied to repression, desire and memory. It is a role that asks its lead to be fragile and frightening in the same scene, sometimes in the same shot. Harboe, twenty-three and barely known, carried it.

Off screen, she arrived at the role unusually well-read: degrees in art history from the University of Oslo and English literature from the University of Stavanger. The education shows in the choices since — an actress who treats cinema as an art form first and an industry second.

What comes next: the Harry Hole moment

Netflix’s Harry Hole series is the biggest production of Harboe’s career by a wide margin, and the most mainstream. But it is telling that her route to a global platform runs through a Norwegian literary institution — Jo Nesbø’s beloved crime novels — rather than a Hollywood casting office. She is arriving at scale as a Norwegian actress, not as an export.

That distinction matters for what comes after. A decade of horror leads, woodland arthouse features and sharp Norwegian television has built her a body of work rather than a profile; the Netflix series will introduce her to a global audience as an actress with a decade of hard, interesting work behind her. Whether she then uses that platform the way she used Thelma — as a calling card for the kind of work she actually wants to do — will be the next interesting choice. Every choice she has made since 2017 reads as an actress who understood exactly what that breakout performance had earned her, and declined to spend it cheaply.

FAQ

What is Eili Harboe best known for?

The title role in Joachim Trier’s Thelma (2017), the supernatural drama about a sheltered young woman whose repressed emotions manifest as terrifying psychokinetic power. The film premiered at Toronto, became Norway’s Oscar entry, and drew rapturous notices from Variety, IndieWire and The Hollywood Reporter.

Did Eili Harboe go to Hollywood after Thelma?

No — and that is the point of her career. Instead of cashing the breakout in for English-language genre films, she spent the decade after Thelma on Norwegian horror leads (Projekt Z, Nightmare), handmade arthouse features (Invitation to Self-Examination) and distinctive Norwegian television (The Architect, The Fortress, Kids in Crime).

What horror films has Eili Harboe starred in?

She took the lead in Projekt Z (2021), Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s zombie feature, and headlined Nightmare (2022), Kjersti Helen Rasmussen’s feature — doubling down on the dark psychological territory where she is strongest.

Was Eili Harboe in Succession?

Yes — she had a small role in HBO’s Succession in 2023. It was a characteristically low-key brush with the biggest show on television: the kind of credit that suggests she is known to casting directors far beyond Norway without having chased them.

What is Eili Harboe doing next?

She is set to appear in Netflix’s Harry Hole series, the streaming giant’s adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s crime novels, directed by Øystein Karlsen and Anna Zachrisson. It is the biggest production of her career — and her route to it ran through Norwegian television and film, not Hollywood.

Where is Eili Harboe from, and what did she study?

She is from Stavanger. She holds degrees in art history from the University of Oslo and English literature from the University of Stavanger — an academic background that shows in the arthouse tilt of her career choices.

Read next: Kristofer Hivju: Beyond Tormund — Norwegian Roles You Missed | Liv Ullmann: The Bergman Muse Who Became a Director