RIGA IFF: Mīlestība

Dag Johan Haugerud
Love
Kjærlighet
NO
2024, 119’, no
Age 16+

 

Days and nights in Oslo. Marianne is a urologist who hears and supports her patients – men – during their heaviest and most vulnerable moments. Something she has in common with her coworker Tor, a male nurse at the hospital, is a certain open-mindedness. One evening, the two cross paths on a ferry. She is on her way home from a date; he – in his usual manner – is scanning the crowd with a spontaneous glance, seeking approachable partners. Marianne and Tor are drawn into a chance conversation that makes them re-evaluate intimacy, desire and tenderness – which do not always align neatly with physical love or eroticism. These days and nights will take the viewer into conversations, revelations and experiences – ones that transform and heal.

 

When you watch the stories of love by Norwegian director Heugerud, it feels like soft, warm hands have embraced you. They brush your hair back. They hold you close. They soothe the pain that’s clogged your heart. This utopia, so described by the director himself and screened in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival, is about trying to achieve sexual and mental closeness with others without necessarily conforming to the societal norms and conventions that govern relationships. This screening will help the viewer peel away the skin of beliefs and presumptions – and so will the characters on screen, who you’ll want to relate to – and serve as a reminder of what true human intimacy is, and what makes us human.

 

Love is the second instalment in Heugerud’s trilogy – following Sex (2024) and serving as a prologue to Dreams (2025), which premiered at this year’s Berlinale, winning the Golden Bear, and is also part of this year’s RIGA IFF programme.