Nordic Film Talks: Hanna Bergholm

Finnish writer/director Hanna Bergholm calls her new film Nightborn (Yön Lapsi) “a modern fable for grown-ups”.

“It’s like the old Grimm fairytales – they are quite horrifying, but you can really relate to those people, no matter how weird the stories might be. This film is for genre film lovers, but also for drama film lovers who like to see great stories,” says Bergholm in the latest episode of the Nordic Film Talks podcast series.

The story follows a Finnish woman, Saga, and her British husband, Jon, who move into a family home in a Finnish forest. When their first child is born, Saga fears that something is very wrong with the baby.

Nightborn is Bergholm’s second feature, following 2022’s Hatching (Pahanhautoja), which premiered at Sundance and sold to more than 75 countries. Nightborn premieres Feb 14 in Berlinale Competition.

Bergholm says the idea for the film started from a personal place when she became a mother. “It really grew from my own experience as a parent. When I had my first child, people told me ‘this is so wonderful, and you must be so happy all the time. Isn't it lovely? Isn't it lovely?’ That's what everybody was telling me. I had a very difficult time in many ways. There are so many emotions related to being a parent that aren’t talked about enough – how confused you are, how much rage you might have at some moments… You're really losing your own space, and how do you cope with that?”

She also wanted to show the physical challenges of motherhood as well. “I wanted in this film to talk about what happens to women's bodies after childbirth, because it's something that we never see in films. There’s a tendency that women in films have to look like 20-year-olds. They have a baby, and then they are very slim and fit again with no wrinkles anywhere. That’s not real life. I wanted to show something else. Since this is kind of a Grimm tale, I really wanted to take it into extremes.”

She knows the themes can be relevant to non-parents too: “This film is also about how to be a person who feels that you are in one way or another different from others, or you are not heard, or for some reason or another you feel that you can't really be yourself.”

Nightborn is her first film mostly in the English language, but that didn’t phase the Helsinki-based director. “I have actually been working in English since Hatching - although the film was in the Finnish language, our crew was from Latvia and the UK and from all around, so the working language was English. In this film, it was part of the storytelling. When writing the script, we wanted to find these little jokes on how you can misunderstand each other.”

Nightborn’s cast is led by Seidi Haarla, who starred in Compartment No. 6 (Hytti nro 6), and Rupert Grint (most famous as Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films). “I had seen Seidi in Compartment No. 6, and although that was a very different role, I could see she has this unique sensibility and also the courage to act with very extreme emotions. And when I started to think about who would be an ideal co-star for Seidi, I thought about Rupert, because he’s always so real in everything, and he has this down-to-earth feeling to him.

As with Hatching - which featured a giant egg as well as a bird-like creature - she wanted to do more special effects than visual effects. “I like the physicality in them,” she says, praising her Oscar-nominated SFX designer Conor O’Sullivan, who worked on prosthetics - and bringing in more animatronic puppets for the baby by Gustav Hoegen. “The baby in this film had to have a weird way of moving.”

The production shot for 45 days, mostly in Lithuania. Producers are Komeetta (Finland) Fimai LT (Lithuania), Getaway Films (France), and Bluelight Nightborn Ltd (UK). Backers include the UK Global Screen Fund, the Finnish Film Foundation, the Lithuanian Film Centre, Eurimages, and the Nordisk Film & TV Fond (NFTVF). World sales are jointly handled by Goodfellas and Anonymous Content.

In the full podcast interview, Bergholm also talks about blending real baby cries with lion cub noises; bringing dark humour into the script with her co-writer Ilja Rautsi; and her cinematic loves, ranging from Akira Kurosawa to Charlie Chaplin.

Listen to the podcast here:

All Nordic Film Talks episodes are available on NFTVF’s website on the Industry Insights section (CLICK HERE), and are distributed through major podcast platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon, Castbox, Deezer, Podcast Addict, Podchaser and JioSaavn.