Warsaw Film Festival wraps with the Icelandic gem Anorgasmia in the main competition

The 41st Warsaw Film Festival concluded on the evening of October 18 with an elegant ceremony at the recently opened Museum of Modern Art in the centre of Warsaw, following a festival that unfolded this year with a remarkably contemplative tone. The films presented in the International Competition were modest in scale yet emotionally charged, reflecting the world’s shifting gravity - as the International Competition Jury President, Lone Scherfig, put it during the closing night in a brief exclusive chat with the Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

“The selection reflects that the world has become a more serious place than when I last had a film here,” Scherfig said after the awards ceremony. “The films in the International Competition are quite small, mostly very dark, but they are also really stunning. Warsaw is a festival that showcases such films – here they can find their audiences, and the audiences can find them.”

For Scherfig, known for her own finely tuned portraits of ordinary humanity, like Italian for Beginners (Italiensk for begyndere) and An Education, the Warsaw selection reaffirmed cinema’s quiet power in difficult times. “We’ve had really good conversations in the jury,” she added. “That’s another thing – festivals are a place where film people can meet.”

The jury’s choices reflected that spirit of dialogue and hope amid darkness. The Grand Prix went to the French film Ninoby Pauline Loquès, a tender debut that, Scherfig said, “had hope”. That word guided the jury’s decision-making.

“I’m often asked regarding my own projects: ‘So where’s the hope?’” she explained. “It struck me that it’s important, when you’re sitting here as an audience or jury member and not a filmmaker, how much of a duty we also have as filmmakers to present hope. Nino is about friendship, trust in people, honesty, and love. Pauline Loquès is a really good director – she has great sensibility and worked with a fine script. It has scenes you’ve seen before, but they turn out very differently; very original and true.”

The Special Jury Mention went to the “two very brave performances”, in Scherfig’s words, of Agata Turkot and Tomasz Schuchardt, the lead actors of Home Sweet Home (Dom dobry, Poland) by Wojtek Smarzowski, featuring domestic violence. Meanwhile, Our Girls (Voor de Meisjes, The Netherlands/Austria/Belgium) by Mike van Diem earned the Best Director Award for its nuanced storytelling. “It’s about how far we’ll go for those we love,” Scherfig said. “Very nuanced, very well directed in terms of actors.”

Scherfig also noted the resilience of filmmakers working within Europe’s tightening budgets. “Because it’s so hard to finance drama these days, there are lots of crew members who can’t really fold out their wings,” she said. “It’s been the performances that have been the most impressive to us, but of course we could also have given a Special Mention to a film for its cinematography or sound. This Icelandic film, Anorgasmia, for example, has a remarkable soundtrack.”

Anorgasmia, produced by the Icelandic outlet Artio Films, in co-production with the Czech Republic’s BFilm and Canada’s Great Canadian Film Factory, emerged as a small, introspective standout - a stripped-down road film about two young people who drive through Iceland’s volcanic highlands and are forced into emotional confrontation by the landscape itself.

“I wanted to make a film about commitment,” Gustafsson said. “About how difficult it’s become for people, especially the younger generation, to actually stay in relationships, in jobs, in countries. Everything nowadays is about moving, swiping, leaving.”

Despite its provocative title, the film isn’t about sex, but about emotional paralysis. “It’s about the inability to feel and connect,” he explained. “Technology has given us everything, except intimacy.”

Shot with a minimal crew and natural light, Anorgasmia embraces imperfection as both form and philosophy. “The Icelandic highlands are raw and unpredictable, that’s what I wanted emotionally too,” Gustafsson said. “Something imperfect.”

The approach recalls the Dogme 95 tradition, and Gustafsson acknowledges the influence. “I miss films that are raw and unfiltered,” he said. “Everything today is too polished, too algorithmic. I wanted to bring back the feeling that anything could go wrong, because that’s how life is.”

The film’s sound design, which Scherfig singled out, became central to its impact. “Sound was our third character,” Gustafsson said. “The wind, the car engine, the breathing – they all carry emotion. Sometimes silence says what dialogue can’t.”

The music, composed by Michael Brook, whose soundtrack to Into the Wild (2008) received a Golden Globe nomination, adds a haunting, off-kilter tone. “He used an out-of-tune piano,” Gustafsson said. “He told me: ‘Let’s embrace the imperfections.’ That was exactly what I was looking for, and it crystallised everything that I was trying to do with the actors. To portray characters that are so out of tune with the world and with themselves.”

Gustafsson’s own return to Iceland after years abroad shaped the film’s emotional landscape. “I’d been living outside Iceland for almost twenty years,” he said. “When I moved back because I got hired to act in Sturla Gunnarsson’s Viking film Beowulf & Grendel (2005) along with Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgård, I ended up spending months in the mountains, and that was like my reintroduction to Iceland. I fell back in love with my island, that I had been trying to avoid before that. This feeling is present in the film.”

The idea for Anorgasmia was born in the aftermath of the 2010 volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which Gustafsson documented as a photographer. “For the first four days, I was the only one who could fly,” he recalled. “I sold the footage worldwide. However, what stayed with me wasn’t the eruption, but rather how people returned to the site years later. Couples had romantic propositions there. There was something spiritual about it, as if destruction was urging connection.” A paradox that lies at the heart of Anorgasmia: Isolation that becomes intimacy, silence that turns into confession.

The film’s script, co-written with Polish screenwriter Karolina Lewicka, deepened its emotional texture. “I can’t convincingly write a female character,” Gustafsson admitted. “Karolina brought her perspective, her sensitivity. She gave the story balance.”

In Warsaw, Anorgasmia somewhat resonated for the same reason Nino did: Both films restored a belief in quiet humanity. “The world’s dark enough already, and to show tenderness today takes courage,” Gustafsson added. Lone Scherfig’s remarks about the duty of filmmakers “to present hope” could easily describe Gustafsson’s intent, though his hope emerges not from narrative resolution, but from endurance.