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Director Kasper Häggström heads to EXIT
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Häggström’s offbeat humour has a distinctive visual style that has already made him a prominent voice in Scandinavian comedy.
Kasper Häggström weaves astute real-life observations, deadpan restraint and unexpected absurdity in perfect balance to make the strange feel grounded, stylish and deeply human. That’s every ingredient for commercials with genuine appeal and memorability as a bonus.
EXIT has recognised his talent to craft commercials that draw attention. Häggström has recently joined the EXIT roster. Wilf Sweetland, co-managing partner at EXIT, stated, “Kasper’s work is mesmerising in its simplicity. Simple human truths told in a beautifully comedic way with so much restraint. We love his view of the world and are pumped he has joined us.”
Häggström’s humour was born in an unexpected place, snowboard films, where his distinctive eye began to attract attention. “Even when I was making snowboard films, I always tried to make people laugh. I found that not taking myself too seriously made the cool parts even cooler. I was also just interested in comedy in general, with most of my friends in Oslo either being stand-up comedians or comedy writers. So, when I stepped into the more conventional side of filmmaking, comedy seemed like an obvious choice.”
Häggström’s blossoming comedy direction then landed in another unexpected place, music videos. International acclaim followed. Häggström collected multiple wins at the UK Music Video Awards. He took home Best Dance Video (Newcomer) in 2018 for Kelly Lee Owens’ Throwing Lines, followed by Best Alternative Video in 2022 for Radiohead’s If You Say The Word, and Best Rock Video in 2023 for Squid’s The Blades.
“Even though my goal (as a teenager) was to make music videos,” he stated, “I sort of randomly stumbled into it in my late twenties. I’d made a short film called Perry, where I used music by a Norwegian musician called Andre Bratten. His record label liked the film enough to let me direct a music video for Kelly Lee Owens, who was very unknown at the time. Following that, I saw that the only way to stand out in the music video business was to treat the videos more like short films than standard performance videos. It meant fewer opportunities, but the ones I get feel very rewarding and personal.”
Through music videos came commercials. And in 2024, Häggström turned an unconventional Christmas commercial idea by agency, Pol, for Norwegian Postal Service, into one of the most remarkable ad stories of the year, Reinfall, the story of Rudolph the Reindeer’s downfall, a very human tragedy about power and unchecked desire.
“The creatives at Pol had done a great job coming up with the concept with a short brief that deliberately left the visual approach open. Once we knew what type of genre this film would exist in, everything else felt quite easy. I would then basically watch as many sport related documentary trailers as possible for inspiration,” Häggström recalled. “Keeping the technical costs as low as possible, gave us more shooting days and a better cast. Except for the interview parts, everything was shot on cheap digital cameras, a super 8mm and a Bolex 16mm camera. This meant that we could keep the crew small and flexible, giving us room to improvise a lot.
“There were a lot of challenges from start to finish, but we were given more or less creative freedom from the agency and the client which made everything feel smooth and effortless in retrospect.” And in case you thought he can’t touch people’s hearts in other ways, Häggström, also produced another captivating standout for Norwegian Postal Service that year, an emotive homage to the fact that “Posten delivers everywhere” a tribute to the mundane in the form of quirky moving postcards.
Comedy isn’t easy, although Häggström makes it look that way. “The obvious answer is casting,” he commented. “It’s hard to make funny films without funny people. But on a practical side I personally think it’s important to treat the filmmaking aspects as seriously as possible. Regardless of how inane the idea is.”
