Neglītā māsa vai graujošais skaistums / Гадкая сестра или сокрушительная красота/ The ugly stepsister

Den stygge stesøsteren / The Ugly Stepsister
Norway, Denmark, Romania, Poland, Sweden, 2025, 110min
Director: Emilie Blichfeldt
Starring: Lea Myren, Thea-Sofie Loch Næss, Ane Dahl Torp, Flo Fagerli, Isac Calmroth

 

How far will you go to live your own fairytale?

 

Elvira  has one all-consuming obsession: to win the affection of her kingdom’s handsome prince and live happily ever after. Yet, she lives in the shadow of her beautiful stepsister, Agnes , who seems fated for the happy ending she’s always dreamed of.

 

In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will go to any lengths to catch the Prince's eye. 'The Ugly Stepsister' is the gory tale of the blood and sweat, grit and gold that goes into making Elvira the belle of the ball.
In a twisted take on the classic Cinderella story, film follows Elvira as she battles to compete with her insanely beautiful stepsister. 

 

The Ugly Stepsister is a dark and gruesome adaptation of the classic story where you truly find out exactly how much pain beauty is.

If Yorgos Lanthimos were to direct a fairy tale about Cinderella, it would become a visually exquisite, extremely disturbing, yet visionary and inventive piece of body horror — juggling nightmare and laughter — filmed with staggering audacity and irony, at times assaulting the viewer, at others bringing them to a state of ecstatic rapture.

Satirical  black comedy “The Ugly Stepsister” sits in conversation with other recent body horror entries presided over by female filmmakers, including Coralie Fargeat’s Oscar-nominated “The Substance”, Julia Ducournau’s “Titane”, and Hanna Bergholm’s “Hatching”. The film premiered at this year’s Sundance festival.