News

Paramount’s Liam Neeson-led The Naked Gun leads this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office releases, starting in 632 cinemas.

The spoof comedy is a reboot of the Naked Gun series, which began with 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, grossing £7.8m.

It was followed by sequels The Naked Gun 2 ½ in 1991, making £8.8m, and The Naked Gun 33 1/3 in 1994, making £5.3m.

The new film sees Neeson as Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., son of the original films’ Frank Drebin, attempting to counter the evil plot of businessman Richard Cane, with the assistance of love interest Beth Davenport. Pamela Anderson...

The Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund has unveiled the full program of its 53rd edition running over Aug.16-22.

Ahead of Venice where she will be in the running for the Golden Lion with her third pic as a helmer, “The Testament of Ann Lee,” the Norwegian-born writer-director Mona Fastvold will bring her star power to the picturesque coastal town of Haugesund, where she will present the Oscar-winning “The Brutalist,” for which she earned an Oscar nod for best screenplay, shared with her partner, helmer Brady Corbet.

“The Brutalist” will both screen at Haugesund’s architecture-led Norwegian Archfest sidebar and compete for best foreign language film at Norway’s annual Amanda Awards, due to unspool Aug. 16 as a preamble to the Norwegian Film Festival. The national film awards, administered by the Norwegian International Film Festival, will be transmitted live that day by NRK1.

“We are thrilled that Mona Fastvold will attend the Amanda Awards,...

Disney’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” claimed the top spot at the U.K. and Ireland box office with a strong debut of £8.1 million ($10.8 million), according to Comscore.

Holding firm at No. 2, Warner Bros.’ “Superman” added $2.5 million in its third weekend, bringing its total to $28.7 million. Universal’s animated sequel “The Bad Guys 2” debuted in third place with $2.1 million.

“Jurassic World Rebirth” was pushed to fourth but held well, earning $2.1 million in its fourth weekend for a cumulative total of $38.5 million. Warner Bros.’ racing drama “F1” rounded out the top five with $867,818, pushing its cume to $26.3 million after five weeks.

In a notable jump, Yash Raj Films’ Bollywood romantic drama “Saiyaara” climbed from 10th to sixth place with $675,380, taking its total to $1.3 million. Paramount’s “Smurfs” followed in seventh with $642,120 for a total of $3.7 million, while Sony’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” took $503,886 in its second week to reach $2.6 million.

Films from parts of the world plagued by war and other hardships dominate the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori that will open with Ukrainian-born director Vladlena Sandu’s autobiographical film “Memory” that revisits her traumatic childhood memories in war-torn Chechnya.

The competition of the Giornate – which is also known as Venice Days – comprises 10 world premieres, none of which are english-language titles. They hail from countries including Iran, Lebanon Kenya, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico, Spain, Greece and Italy.

The selection features another filmmaker, Germany-based Russian filmmaker Nastia Korkia, re-elaborating the Chechnyan conflict in “A Short Summer,” the story of eight-year-old Katya, who goes on vacation with her grandparents just as the war in Chechnya breaks out.

“In many of the selected titles the goal is life, building lives, relationships. One tries to process grief in order to overcome it and try hard to see the world...

Venice parallel section Giornate degli Autori has unveiled the line-up for its 22nd edition.

The main competition, showcasing 10 features, will open with Ukrainian artist and filmmaker Vladlena Sandu’s Memory, a deeply personal work piecing together childhood memories of life in Chechnya’s capital of Grozny amid the violence of the First Chechen War.

The Chechen Wars also loom large in exiled Germany-based Russian director Nastia Korkia’s Short Summer about an eight -year-old girl vacationing with her grandparents as their marriage crumbles and the conflict in the North Caucasus spills into everyday Russian life.

Further contenders include Spanish director Gabriel Azorín Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, following two men who return from the front and seek out an ancient thermal bath, the mysterious waters of which giving them the courage to say things they have never before told anyone.

Kenyan filmmaker Damien Hauser, who made waves...

Politically-charged dramas and documentaries from Ukraine to Iran, and from Mexico to Kenya will share the spotlight at the Venice film festival’s Venice Days sidebar, which announced its 2025 lineup today.

The diverse program ranges from the section’s opening night film, the autobiographical drama Memory Ukrainian artist and filmmaker Vladlena Sandu, a survivor of the war in Chechnya, who studies her traumatic memories in order to transcend and transform them via the art of cinema; to Spanish director Gabriel Azorín’s Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes about two young men returning from the front who spend a day of confession and revelation in an ancient Roman thermal bath; to Memory of Princess Mumbi, from Kenyan filmmaker Damien Hauser that combines elements of sci-fi, mockumentary and animation to tell a dystopian fable set in an imaginary Africa in the year 2093 after an A.I.-precipitated disaster.

‘Memory...

Damien Hauser’s Memory Of Princess Mumbi is among 10 features in competition at Giornate degli Autori, the independent sidebar of Venice Film Festival.

The latest feature from Swiss-Kenyan director Hauser is a dystopian fable set in an imaginary Africa in 2093, in which a young filmmaker attempts to make a documentary about a global conflict from 20 years earlier.

Scroll down for the full list of features

Hauser produced the film with Shandra Apondi and former Red Sea Film Festival director of international programming Kaleem Aftab. It is Hauser’s fourth feature; his previous film After The Long Rains played at BFI London Film Festival last year.

Exclusive: SpectreVision, the production company of Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Lawrence Inglee, has partnered with Norwegian filmmaker Patrik Syversen on Dawning, a genre-bending feature that has wrapped production.

Described as a Scandinavian prestige drama filtered through a horror prism, the story follows three sisters who have withdrawn to their family’s vacation home in the wake of the youngest sister’s second suicide attempt. When news reaches them that their abusive mother has passed, the two elder sisters decide not to tell the youngest, to spare her the burden. Things begin to unravel when a mysterious man shows up on the property, shifting the siblings’ perspective from one of introspection and analysis to something a lot more primal. Check out a first-look still above.

Dawning stars top Norwegian talent Kathrine Thorborg Johansen (Canneseries winner Power Play), Marte Magnusdotter Solem (Karlovy Vary winner Lovable), frequent Dag Johan Haugerud collaborator Thorbjørn Harr,...

"That's why I wrote it down. To keep it with me." Strand Releasing has unveiled an official US trailer for an award-winning Norwegian indie film titled Dreams, the final film in the trilogy from filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud. Dreams, along with Love and Sex, originally premiered at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. In a very weak competition selection, it ended up winning the Golden Bear top prize at Berlinale, because it was one of the better films in the entire line-up. At the start of Dreams, Johanne documents her intense crush on her French teacher Johanna. Her mother and grandmother end up reading these intimate writings. They're both horrified by the content but taken by the powerful writing & story. Johanne navigates romantic ideals vs reality, exploring emotions of self-discovery, love, sexuality. A coming-of-age story about discovering she's a lesbian. Starring Ella Øverbye as Johanne, with Ane Dahl Torp,...

The 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) will feature key Cannes Film Festival winners in its Horizons section and a selection of action and horror movies, both new and older, for its revamped Midnight Screenings program under the new name “Afterhours.”

In a lineup update unveiled on Friday, Kviff said it will this year screen more than 130 feature films in the picturesque Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary.

The Horizons lineup, which traditionally features highlights from the festival circuit of the past year, includes the likes of Jay Duplass’ The Baltimorons, Tom Shoval’s A Letter to David, Michel Franco’s Dreams, My Father’s Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr., Mary Bronstein‘s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, Jafar Panahi‘s Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident, and fellow Cannes...

Caught by the Tides

Jia Zhang-ke’s elegiac and poetic feature revolves around a woman (Zhao Tao) who journeys from her home in a fading industrial city in search of a vanished former boyfriend. The movie looks back on China’s recent history, but also on Jia’s filmography, echoing themes, geographical features, techniques and structural elements while incorporating footage shot at various intervals from 2001 through 2023 — an approach that gives it a kind of kinship with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. — David Rooney

Ghost Trail

Centering on a Syrian exile tracking down his former torturer in France, Jonathan Millet’s film is a work of visceral intensity and formidable control. Millet has a shrewd grasp of paranoid-thriller mechanics; a refreshing preference for intimacy and clarity over distancing stylistic or narrative fussiness; and two fantastic actors: soulful, movie-star-magnetic lead Adam Bessa and Tawfeek Barhom as a villain whose humanity is the most chilling thing about him.

Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud took a challenge when he decided to make three movies on the same topic, but with different perspectives. That is how he describes his Sex, Dreams, Love trilogy. All three of them have achieved critically acclaimed status for how they diverge into the complicated nature of human relationships and connection.

Each one of them focuses on conversations rather than the act, exploring the human psyche in ways like no other. Deeply believable, relevant, and grounded in everyday life, the celebrated director revealed that the inspiration to write and direct the films came at the behest of a student journalist.

Dag Johan Haugerud explains why he made Sex Sex (2024) | Credits: Novemberfilm

Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex (2024), the first film in his Sex Dreams Love trilogy, premiered at Berlinale’s Panorama section, winning the Europa Cinemas Label and the Cicae Art Cinema Award.

Related: “My...

You can call it bold, baffling, or just brutally honest, but naming your film Sex in 2024 is the cinematic equivalent of walking into a church with fireworks. Norwegian auteur Dag Johan Haugerud, known for his hushed, layered human dramas, opens his trilogy not with a whimper, but with a word that ignites eyebrows, triggers algorithms, and gets tangled in the sticky web of Google searches.

Yes, Sex is the first chapter of Haugerud’s Sex, Dreams, Love trilogy, a slow-burning exploration of identity, intimacy, and everything people only talk about in rooms with closed doors and dim lighting.

Inside Dag Johan Haugerud’s bold film gamble Sex (2024) | Credit: Viaplay Group

Sex (2024), the first tender limb of his Norwegian trilogy Sex, Dreams and Love, is not a skin-deep foray into lust but a gaze into the murky backstreets of identity, desire, and long-repressed truths. Two married men, straight on paper, stumble...

Hit Sundance documentary Prime Minister starts an exclusive run at AMC Theaters. Samuel L. Jackson and Pierce Brosnan test out a western in The Unholy Trilogy. Venice-premiering Israeli-Iranian sports drama Tatami, part two of a Norwegian trilogy and a doc on Simple Minds launched during the group’s North American tour populate a lively specialty box office. Neon takes a big jump with Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation Life Of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston from 16 screens to 1,075 in week 2.

Magnolia Pictures debuts documentary Prime Minister, Sundance Audience Award Winner in the World Cinema Documentary Competition this year, at 56 AMC theaters in an exclusive weeklong run, expanding to Laemmle and a handful of arthouses in coming weeks.

Directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, the doc follows former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as she led her nation through the pandemic, balancing the personal and professional in the highest seat of power.

A tender and gently probing Norwegian drama about a pair of Oslo chimney sweeps whose lives are forever changed when they casually open up to each other in between jobs one morning, Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Sex” — the standalone first installment of the director’s Kieślowski-inspired “Sex, Love, Dreams” trilogy — is a far cry from the prurient spectacle promised by its title. Indeed, this sweet and chatty film, in which sex is often discussed but never depicted, could just as easily have been called “Love” or “Dreams” (that it wasn’t seems like a joke typical of Haugerud’s dry sense of humor).

But that isn’t to accuse the director of a bait-and-switch. As Oscar Wilde is quoted to have said: “Everything is about sex, except sex.” In that sense, “Sex” is more about sex than it ever could have been if it contained any sex. While “Sex” may...

A fact often gone unacknowledged is that, as we age, our desires unwittingly change. When it does, the terms we used to define ourselves and those around us must undergo a process of deconstruction, after which one can fashion a new vocabulary. At the start of Norwegian novelist-turned-filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex, the first installment in his Oslo Trilogy––followed by Love and concluding with Dreams, which won the Golden Bear at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival––we encounter two middle-aged chimney sweeps in the middle of confessing their respective crises of identity, which has left them bewildered and distraught.

The first, Avdelingsleder (Thorbjørn Harr), is concerned with a dream where David Bowie appears and looks at him like he’s a woman, instilling in him a mollifying feeling that remains in waking life. The other, Feier (Jan Gunnar Røise), unpacks a recent, unexpected, rather pleasant sexual encounter with a...

Like Ingmar Bergman, Éric Rohmer, and Hong Sang-soo before him, Dag Johan Haugerud believes in the niceties of conversation. Sex, one third of the writer-director’s Oslo Stories trilogy, largely consists of dialogue-driven scenes across which his characters reveal their desires and emotions. If the style of these long, mostly static scenes isn’t exactly novel, it nevertheless indicates how Haugerud aligns his work within a certain arthouse tradition, which pays modest dividends throughout the film’s two-hour runtime.

Early on, an unnamed, middle-aged man (Jan Gunnar Røise) sits off screen, listening as his boss (Thorbjørn Harr), also unnamed and middle-aged, discusses a dream in which he encounters David Bowie, who mistakes him for a woman. “He was taking charge from there. And that felt so good,” the man says. But, he adds, the dream didn’t end in sex. Then, as the camera pulls back and pans right, the...

"Wasn't it weird?" "It felt good. It was actually pretty mind-blowing." Strand Releasing has unveiled the official US trailer for Sex, the next film in Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud's series of films known as the Oslo Trilogy. This has the most provocative title of the 3 films (obviously), though it's a rather tame film without any actual sex in it at all – only conversations about the act of having sex. Sex is the first part of the trilogy Sex Dreams Love (watch the trailer for Love here). These three freestanding films by Dag Johan Haugerud all revolve around desire, identity, and the longing for freedom. In this one – two chimney sweeps living in monogamous, heterosexual marriages both end up in situations that will challenge their views on sexuality. Sex is a warm, inquiring drama about how intimacy & freedom operate in modern relationships & gender roles. Staring Jan Gunnar Røise and Thorbjørn Haar,...

Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud has been named as jury president of Giornate degli Autori, the independent section of the Venice Film Festival.

Haugerud won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival for Dreams.

The jury presidency marks a homecoming for Haugerud, whose 2019 film Beware of Children had its world premiere in competition at the Giornate degli Autori.

Haugerud said: “Giornate is close to my heart, with its passionate and selective programming, and the fact that it’s cherry-picking only 10 films with special care for innovation, originality and independence.“

Giornate artistic director Gaia Furrer said: “His cinema...

Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud, who won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear earlier this year for Dreams, has been named the jury president for Giornate Degli Autori, the independent section within the Venice Film Festival promoted by the Italian filmmaker associations Anac and 100autori.

The decision marks a “homecoming” of sorts for the filmmaker after Barn (Beware of Children), which had its world premiere in competition at the Giornate degli Autori in 2019, was Haugerud’s international debut.

“I’m thrilled and excited to be entrusted with the honorable assignment of presiding over this year’s jury of Giornate degli Autori”, said Haugerud. “Giornate is close to my heart, with its passionate and selective programming, and the fact that it’s cherry-picking only 10 films with special care for innovation, originality and independence.”

He added: “Art, literature and cinema are more important than ever, they represent an opportunity for both...

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 Filmfest Hamburg coverage. Love opens in theaters on May 16.

It takes confidence to name your film––simply and so very unspecifically––Love. Michael Haneke could get away with it for giving us the classic that is Amour. Gaspar Noé, on the other hand, came across poorly in his take on the L-word. Does Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud have something vital to say on the subject? In a breezy tone that soothes rather than shocks, yes. His film contemplates the many forms and possibilities of love while luxuriating in the Nordic vistas of Oslo. Not the most groundbreaking filmmaking, perhaps, but it’s pure cinematic balm that celebrates the basic, beautiful human need to connect. Fans of Joachim Trier’s work and Linklater’s Before trilogy, take note.

Itself part of a thematic trilogy about sex, dreams, and love, the...

The insistent warmth of Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love, one third of his Oslo Stories trilogy, can be off-putting at first. The characters smile and wait for each other to finish speaking before faultlessly articulating what’s on their minds. The camera gazes lovingly at the Oslo skyline in symmetrical compositions taken from offshore. The scenes are lit and staged with a clarity so stark that the aesthetics almost verge on the plainness of daytime TV. Peder Kjellsby’s score seems to be running in overdrive, flagrantly outlining the emotional valence of a scene.

But once one surrenders to the gentle rhythms of Jense Christian Fodstad’s editing, to the frankness with which Haugerud’s characters approach life and which he approaches the material, the film is utterly enrapturing. The apparent simplicity serves to highlight the rich complexity of human emotion that Love celebrates. By the end, it’s tempting...

Exclusive: Strand Releasing has acquired North American rights to Acid title Drunken Noodles from Berlin-based M-Appeal on the first day of the market.

Drunken Noodles is the latest English-language feature from Argentinian-born, New York–based filmmaker Lucio Castro.

The queer drama stars Laith Khalifeh as a young art student who arrives in New York City to flat-sit for the summer. He begins interning at a gallery where an unconventional older artist he once encountered is being exhibited. The film co-stars Joel Isaac, Ezriel Kornel, and Matthew Risch.

Castro was inspired to write the story by the real-life artist Sal Salandra,...

Ain’t Nothin’ But Sex Misspelled: Haugerud Continues Quiet, Earnest Talking Cure Trilogy

Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud continues his sexuality-themed film trilogy (Sex/Dreams/Love) in Love, following the first installment, Sex, which premiered earlier this year at the Berlin International Film Festival. While the third segment, Dreams, has yet to be released, it’s clear the connective tissue is theme rather than character. Employing the same sense of endearing, blunt loquaciousness which defined the earlier chapter, there’s an even greater level of profundity with a second narrative paralleling and juxtaposing the sexual experiences and approaches of two main characters, a heterosexual female urologist and her colleague, a gay male nurse.…...

Irish filmmaker Brendan Canty’s debut feature Christy will open the 24th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Romania’s Cluj-Napoca on June 13.

The coming-of-age-story had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Generation 14plus section where it won the section’s Grand Prix for best film.

The film will be launching TIFF’s new competitive section, Teen Spirit, dedicated to exploring youth culture through fiction and documentary films, with the winning film being decided by a jury made up of local teenagers aged 16 to 20.

The screening of Christy on Cluj-Napoca’s Unirii Square will be preceded...

Sydney Film Festival (June 4-15) has revealed the full programme for its 72nd edition, including a 12-strong competition lineup dominated by features set to premiere at Cannes.

The festival has selected 201 films from 70 countries, which includes 17 world premieres, and has added the iconic Sydney Opera House as a screening venue this year, joining the State Theatre and cinemas across the city.

The opening film has been set as Together, written and directed by Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks and starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco. The domestic drama with a supernatural twist premiered at Sundance, where it proved the commercial hit...

“A Better Man,” backed by Norway’s Nrk, a byword these days for adventurous shows, has a first teaser, which sets out he set-up for one of the major buzz titles set to world premiere this weekend in Canneseries competition.

Produced by Maipo (“The Crossing”), which won big at Canneseries’ first edition with “State of Happiness,” “A Better Man” excels – like some other of the series which will bow at Canneseries over April 24-29 – in its large relevance, drilling down on Internet trolling, the cancel culture and men’s notions of masculinity. It’s also brief, as many series shorten, just four episodes. But its issues are wrapped in what becomes a social survival thriller. Most important, it’s also often touching.

Beta Film, which handles international distribution, has just dropped a teaser which presents the miniseries’ basic set-up.

“Do you know what the fat around the penis is called?...

"Will this end in a sexual fusion of the three?" Strand Releasing has unveiled the first official US trailer for the film titled Love, part of the Norwegian film trilogy called The Oslo Trilogy made by filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud. This just premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival last year, the second one following Sex (at Berlinale 2024) and Dreams (at Berlinale 2025). Love focuses on two colleagues at an Oslo hospital — Marianne, a straight (and straitlaced) doctor, and Tor, a gay male nurse, who are avoiding conventional relatiosnhips. Both single, they cross paths and confide in each other: Marianne confesses her desire to be more adventurous and open in her encounters with men; Tor shares his fatigue with Grindr hook-ups. Their conversations form the heart of exploration of desire and emotional fulfillment. The idea of spontaneous intimacy, and questioning societal norms... Starring Andrea Bræin Hovig, Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen, Marte Engebrigtsen, Lars Jacob Holm,...

While this summer has its fair share of sequels, leave it to Dag Johan Haugerud and Strand Releasing to roll out an entire trilogy of films across the season. Fresh off the Norwegian filmmaker’s Berlinale Golden Bear win for Dreams, the final entry in his Oslo Trilogy, all three features will begin their theatrical runs at NYC’s Film Forum across the first three months of the summer.

Love will open on May 16, followed by Sex on June 13 and Dreams on September 12 at Film Forum. The films each open on national rollouts following their respective opening dates in cities around North America. Ahead of the roll-out the first trailer for Love has arrived, along with posters for the trilogy.

Zhuo-Ning Su said in his review of the first entry, “It takes confidence to name your film––simply and so very unspecifically––Love. Michael Haneke could get away with it...

The 2025 Berlin Film Festival jury, led by Todd Haynes, fell hard for their eventual Golden Bear winner “Dreams (Sex Love),” the third entry in a trilogy from Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud. Now, Strand Releasing has announced the acquisition of the film, about the fallout of a young woman’s (Ella Øverbye) crush on her female French teacher (Selome Emnetu), for North American release. Strand will also release the prior films in Haugerud’s Oslo Trilogy, “Sex” and “Love,” this summer as well. Watch the trailer for “Love” below.

Here’s the official synopsis of Berlin winner “Dreams,” as a refresh: “In ‘Dreams,’ Johanne falls in love for the first time, with her teacher. To preserve her feelings, she documents her emotions and experiences in writing. When her mother and grandmother read what she has written, they are initially shocked by its intimate content but soon see that it has literary potential.

Todd Haynes will receive the Golden Coach Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight.

The honorary award is handed out by the governing body of the Cannes sidebar, the Society of French Directors (Sfr). The ceremony paying tribute to Haynes will take place on May 14 in Cannes.

“From ‘Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story to Safe,’ ‘Velvet Goldmine,’ ‘Carol’ and ‘May December,’ your films have been inhabited by a great faith in cinema’s experimental and narrative possibilities,” said the Srf in a letter signed by its members, including Julie Bertuccelli, Romain Cogitore, Cédric Klapisch and Zoé Wittock. The org praised Haynes for its “genius to move and mesmerize us in a single move, combining formal virtuoso with infinite empathy and tenderness.”

Haynes has been “relentlessly shaking up the norms and structures of cinematic representation in order to better question our social, racial and gender representations; as...

American director Todd Haynes will be honored by his French peers at this year’s Cannes film festival, receiving the lifetime achievement Carrosse d’Or award from the French Film Directors’ Guild.

The queer cinema pioneer, whose filmography includes Carol, Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, I’m Not There and May December, will receive the award on May 14 at the opening ceremony for Directors’ Fortnight, the Cannes festival sidebar organized by the guild.

“From Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story to Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Carol and May December, your films have been inhabited by a great faith in cinema’s experimental and narrative possibilities,” the guild said of Haynes in a statement. “Your genius is to move and mesmerize us in a single move, combining formal virtuoso with infinite empathy and tenderness. Your films are a haven for anyone who knows the price they have paid for their feelings and their difference.

Berlin sales outfit M-Appeal has sealed further deals for Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Dreams,” as well as additional sales for “Sex” and “Love,” the other films in the director’s trilogy.

“Dreams” follows Johanne, a young woman who documents her first love — an infatuation with her teacher — through intimate writing. When her mother and grandmother discover her work, their initial shock turns to recognition of its literary merit. As they weigh publishing it, Johanne is forced to reconcile fantasy with reality, while all three women explore their differing perspectives on love, sexuality and self-discovery.

Vendetta Films has acquired the trilogy for Australia and New Zealand. “We fell in love with ‘Dreams’ and we think this unique and mystery-filled spin on the age-old tale of a student falling for their teacher is perfect for modern audiences. We’re so excited to bring Dag Johan Haugerud...

The 49th Hong Kong International Film Festival will kick off on April 10 with dual opening features, Japanese drama The Brightest Sun and Malaysia-Hong Kong co-production Pavane for an Infant. Berlin Golden Bear winner Dreams (Sex Love), directed by Norway’s Dag Johan Haugerud, will then bring the curtain down on the event on April 21 as the closing film. The festival’s lineup was unveiled Monday at a press conference at Hong Kong’s Filmart Content Market.

The Brightest Sun is filmmaker Tetsuya Nakashima’s adaptation of a novel by popular Japanese author Bunzo Uchikai. It’s the first film from Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls, The World of Kanako) in seven years. Pavane for an Infant, meanwhile, directed by Chong Keat Aun, is a drama exploring the issue of baby abandonment through the eyes of a female social worker (Malaysian-born Hong Kong actress Fish Liew).

Two local Hong Kong features have been...

Japanese filmmaker Nakashima Tetsuya’s The Brightest Sun and Malaysia-Hong Kong co-production Pavane For An Infant, directed by Chong Keat-Aun, will open this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (April 10-21).

Berlin Golden Bear winner Dreams (Sex Love), directed by Norway’s Dag Johan Haugerud, has been set as the closing film of the festival.

Two Hong Kong productions will receive Gala Screenings – Valley Of The Shadow Of Death, starring Anthony Wong, and Oliver Chan Siu-kuen’s Montages Of A Modern Motherhood, which played in Busan International Film Festival’s New Currents section and Tokyo International Film Festival’s Women’s Empowerment strand last year.

Hkiff’s Cinephile Paradise section will screen films such as Geng Jun’s Bel Ami, Vivian Qu’s Girls On Wire, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Luis Ortega’s Kill The Jockey and Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes.

As previously announced, Hong Kong actor...

Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Love” was one of the 17 films which had their French premiere at the inaugural edition of the festival Visions Nordiques – French Nordic Film Days.

The fest is taking place March 5-9 across several locations in Paris, including the Grand Action theater; as well as the industry programme and co-production workshop taking place at Cnc and the Institut Suedois. Tributes were hosted for Lars von Trier and Aki Kaurismäki with the screenings of “Breaking the Waves” and “Le Havre.” The film lineup comprised “Love,” which premiered at Venice (and was followed by the Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Dreams (Sex Love)); Baltasar Kormákur’s “Touch,” Eirik Svensson’s “Safe House;” Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s “Loveable;” and Frida Kempff’s “The Swedish Topedo,” among others.

The event is jointly organized by The Five Nordics, France’s National Film Board, with the support of the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Embassies of Denmark,...

Vital support from local film commissions for distribution and sales, bolstering co-production opportunities and the fragile state of geoblocking were among the issues highlighted at the inaugural industry programme at the French Nordic Film Days in Paris.

More than 300 French and Nordic film industry professionals gathered in the French capital from March 5-7 for the event organised by France’s Cnc with the Five Nordics.

The industry programme, which ran alongside a series of screenings and filmmaker Q&As designed to spark interest in Nordic titles among French audiences, was held at Paris’ Swedish Institute and Cnc headquarters.Top of...

Following on from its Golden Bear triumph at the Berlinale, Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams (Sex Love) is continuing to rack updeals and is now sold out in almost all the European territories handled by Berlin-based sales agent m-appeal.

Countries that have come on boardforDreamssincethe European Film Market include Greece (Filmtrade), Turkey (Bir Film) and Romania (Bad Unicorn). Ukraine is currently in negotiation, as is Australia.

Dreams is part of a trilogy of related but self-contained features, also including Sex and Love, that Haugerud shot back to back.Filmtrade and Bad Unicorn bought only Dreams while Bir Film acquired the entire trilogy.

Dag Johan Haugerud: 'We worked with some textile artists. It’s very apparent what the wool is doing to us, the feeling of wool - carrying it on the skin and seeing it as well' Photo: © Agnete Brun/courtesy of Berlinale

Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex Dreams Love trilogy is an ambitious work that explores the multifaceted nature of desire in the modern world. The three films are stand-alone works, although there is a common character, Bjorn (Lars Jacob Holm), who appears in all three and whose character comes more to the fore in the third part, Love, which considers different attitudes to sex through the prism of a woman considering casual liaisons. Sex, meanwhile, focuses on a man whose life is shaken up by an unexpected sexual encounter, while Dreams zones in on a teenager’s sexual memoir which may or may not be a factual document of her relationship with her teacher.

Exclusive: The Sonoma International Film Festival announced the lineup for the 28th annual edition of the event, running March 19-23 in California’s bucolic wine country. Kicking off the festival will be the world premiere of Sweet Störy, a documentary that follows “a heartfelt journey to save a charming café” on a remote Swedish island.

Siff also will feature the world premieres of Roush Niaghi and Greg Morris’s Ali Eats America; Fernando Guillermo Barreda Luna’s Cafe Chairel, and Fatal Watch, directed by Mark Benjamin and Katie Carpenter. The festival will host the North American premiere of Dreams, the film directed by Dag Johan Haugerud that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last month.

Daisy Edgar-Jones in ‘On Swift Horses’

The Siff Centerpiece Film will be the California premiere of On Swift Horses, the drama starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi that’s based on the Shannon Pufahi novel.

Filmin distribuirá la trilogía completa. © Filmin

Dreams (Sex Love), la que se ha conquistado el Oso de Oro a la Mejor Película de la 75 edición del Festival de Berlín, llegará a España bajo la distribución de Filmin.

Dirigida por el noruego Dag Johan Haugerud, Dreams (Sex Love) es la entrega final de su trilogía antológica Sex, Love, Dreams, y cuenta la historia de Johanne (Selome Emnetu), una chica que se enamora perdidamente de su profesora de francés, experimentando su primer enamoramiento intenso. En un esfuerzo por preservar sus sentimientos, documenta sus emociones y experiencias por escrito. Cuando su madre y su abuela leen lo que ha escrito, al principio reaccionan con sorpresa ante su contenido íntimo, pero pronto quedan cautivadas por sus cualidades literarias.

Además, Sex, la primera película de esta trilogía, ya se encuentra disponible en la plataforma de streaming. Por su parte, Love, la segunda entrega, concursó en...

Official awards of the 75th Berlinale International Film Festival have been announced and “Dreams” directed by Dag Johan Haugerud won the Golden Bear Award.

According to the report of Mansour Jahani, an independent and international cinema journalist, The closing ceremony of the Berlinale International Film Festival was held at 18:00 on February 22, 2025, at the Berlinale Palast in the city of Berlin, Germany, and the winners of various competition, including; the Main Competition, Perspectives (Gwff Best First Feature Award), the Berlinale Documentary Award as well as the Berlinale Shorts prizes were introduced and the prestigious Golden Bear award for the best film and other awards of this film event were awarded to the winners.

The Prizes of the International Jury

The members of the 2025 International Jury, The members of the jury of the Main Competition of this prestigious and first-class world cinema event are: The US-American director, screenwriter and producer Todd Haynes,...

A few years ago, my sister-in-law came to stay with my wife and I and over dinner told us about a friend she’d been developing deeper feelings for. They’d gone to graduate school together and were of the same clique, but an intimacy had grown between the two she was struggling to ignore. While my wife felt inclined to ask more questions and break the situation down further, I simply asked, “Do you lie to your friends?” My sister-in-law paused for a moment, then said, “I don’t see why I’d have a reason to.”

“Then why are you lying to one right now?” I responded. She offered a few excuses — she didn’t want to ruin the friendship, plus, while she’d had male partners, this was the first time she’d be expressing feelings for a woman — but ultimately registered that holding onto these emotions...

Todd Haynes’ jury awarded the 75th Berlin Intl. Film Festival’s top honors this past Saturday to Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams (Sex Love) but the Golden Bear winner wasn’t the consensus top choice from the critic establishment, instead it’s the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner in Gabriel Mascaro’s fourth feature O último azul that was the favorite. The Brazilian fantasy film produced by Rachel Daisy Ellis and Sandino Saravia Vinay pulled together the top culminated score on Screen Daily grid and was the first ★★★★ stamped competition film review from our chief film critic Nicholas Bell. Here are the winners, Nicholas’ competition film reviews and the grid.…...

The 75th Berlin International Film Festival has wrapped its first year under new artistic director Tricia Tuttle. Along with programming directors Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz, Tuttle worked to curate a festival that would attract audiences, not just the industry, as the Berlinale is the largest public film festival in the world.

The awards this past Saturday were crowned by the Norwegian coming-of-age romantic drama, “Dreams (Sex Love),” the third in a trilogy of films by Dag Johan Haugerud, and one that raises fascinating questions about consent and authorship. The festival started off rockily, opening with Tom Tykwer’s roundly dismissed, Berlin-set, sanctimonious paean to white guilt, “The Light,” but the Berlinale soon rebounded with the rapturous receptions to films like Richard Linklater’s Lorenz Hart chamber tragicomedy “Blue Moon” and Bong Joon Ho’s satirical sci-fi spectacle “Mickey 17.”

Deals out of the European Film Market, like what we saw at Sundance,...

The 2025 Berlin International Film Festival has reported 336,000 ticket sales – a record across the 75 editions of the festival.

Admissions are up slightly on the previous record of 335,986 sales from 2016, with exact figures still to come. The sales from the Berlinale Goes Kiez programme, screening festival films at Berlin neighbourhood cinemas, are also still to be reported.

The sales figures are also an increase on the 329,502 tickets sold at the 2024 edition.

Numbers of accredited professionals were down slightly, to 19,000 from 19,968 in 2024.

This year’s 75th edition featured around 1,000 public screenings, and 340 audience discussions/Q&As with film teams.

The European Film Market...

How far back in the Berlin Film Festival’s 75-year history do you have to go to find an edition as strong as this one? About a quarter-century, I reckon, to 2002, when “Bloody Sunday” and “Spirited Away” tied for the festival’s top prize.

As long as I can remember, Berlin held the distant-third spot in the so-called “Big Three” festivals, far behind Cannes and Venice in both prestige and its power to attract the caliber of movies that shape the conversation. It may never surpass its two older cousins, but for the first time in forever, under the direction of incoming festival chief Tricia Tuttle and her team, I felt a frisson of excitement bubbling up through the slippery ice and sub-zero temperatures.

Berlin has always felt like a slog, between the climate and the scandalously low hit-to-miss ratio in a sprawling lineup of nearly 200 films. Still, I hadn...

Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail is the winner of this year’s Berlin jury grid with an average score of 3.4 as Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp, Hong Sangsoo’s What Does Nature Say To You and Lionel Baier’s The Safe House completethe entries.

The Blue Trailstars Denise Weinberg in a dystopian fable following a 77-year-old who embarks on a journey through the Amazon. It received four four-stars (excellent) and five three-stars (good) and beats last year’s joint winners My Favourite Cake and The Devil’s Bath with 3.1.In the official Berlin award ceremony, the film received theSilver Bear grand...

It may not have been used as a title but one thing that all three of Dag Johan Haugerud’s loose trilogy Sex, Dreams, Love share is desire, which ripples in all its forms under each of them. Dreams - the intended second part of the trilogy, although the last to make its bow internationally, at Berlin, where it won the Golden Bear - is focused on the fuzzy spot where desire and reality meet in the mind of a teenager.

This means that Dreams, more than Love and Sex, operates in spaces that often feel more liminal than concrete - a choice indicated right from the first moments when the camera observes a set of stairs on a misty day. Not only are they a transient space in and of themselves, but also shrouded and with no indication of either how far they run or what their end...

"I was simply head over heels in love with Johanna. That's why I wrote it down. To keep it with me." After another long winter film festival at the end of February, the 2025 Berlin Film Festival announced the award winners - giving the Golden Bear top prize to Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud and his film known as Dreams (in English). This warm and fuzzy Norwegian film is deserving of the top prize at this year's festival, finally a winner that seems to be less of a political pick and more about wonderful filmmaking getting reconigition. I'm glad I had a chance to catch up with Dreams at the end of Berlinale, right before it would go on to win, as it is a seriously wholesome and uplifting cinematic experience. Everyone feels better after watching it. And I'm glad I could catch this one on the big screen and take it in,...