RIGA IFF: Sapņi

Dag Johan Haugerud
Dreams
Drømmer
NO
2024, 110’, no
Age 16+

 

Johanne is in love. For the very first time. Gazing at her new French teacher, the girl forgets herself – drowning in the fibres of her jumpers, the curls of her hair, their imagined closeness. Johanne seems to be dreaming while awake. One evening, the girl sets off to visit the teacher she desires. The seventeen-year-old pours her feelings onto paper, describing this relationship. Seeing in her a literary talent, Johanne’s mother and grandmother are taken aback by the revelations of her emotional world. Yet as time passes, a question starts spiralling – what truly happened between Johanne and the teacher? And is everything the promising young writer has described actually true?

 

A triumph of subjectivism, laid out on the screen. The winner of this year’s Golden Bear at the Berlinale ushers us into the final chapter in Heugerud’s contemporary love trilogy. The acclaimed Norwegian filmmaker refuses clichés or subgenre additives when exploring a first romance – he consistently provokes the viewer with directness, social taboos, and the lingering question: did what we see on screen really happen? Or do we wish for it to happen? Mighty in form, the film possesses an oneiric – that is, dreamlike – quality: Oslo street lights twinkle, apartment windows glow like warm-toned neoclassical paintings, and the characters – especially the Norwegian Ella Øverbye – appear to have lived since the time of Virginia Woolf, telling this story for as long as we’ve been able to remember ourselves.

 

Dreams is the concluding part of Heugerud’s trilogy – following Sex (2024) and Love (2024), the latter of which also features in this year’s RIGA IFF programme.