Max Borg’s Five Nordic Picks

SAUNA (Mathias Broe, Denmark)
Queer romance with a twist: a cisgender gay man’s world is turned upside down when others start shunning him for falling in love with a trans man. First-time director Mathias Broe draws achingly compelling performances from his two young leads, Magnus Juhl Andersen and Nina Rask, and deftly explores the complexities of Copenhagen’s LGBTQ+ community.

SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE (Jalmari Helander, Finland)
Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), the taciturn one-man army who decimated a squad of Nazis in 2022’s Sisu, is back for a second serving of ass-whooping, this time on Soviet turf against the man (Stephen Lang) who slaughtered his family. High-octane filmmaking of the finest variety, with Jalmari Helander once again confirming he’s one of the more intriguing names in European genre cinema.

THE GROUND BENEATH OUR FEET (Yrsa Roca Fannberg, Iceland)
Seasons pass within the confines of a Reykjavik retirement home, where the director carefully documents the everyday routines of the residents, some of whom are almost a century old. A lovingly realized portrait of a generation that hasn’t lost its spark, even as their bodies begin to wobble more than usual.

SOLOMAMMA (Janicke Askevold, Norway)
Single motherhood (by choice) undergoes a singularly thorny transformation in Janicke Askevold’s sharp sophomore feature, where a journalist (brilliantly played by Lisa Loven Kongsli) crosses ethical boundaries to figure out the identity of the sperm donor (Herbert Nordrum) who fathered her son. Funny and thoughtful in equal measure, especially when the two leads share the screen.

RAPTURES (Jon Blåhed, Sweden)
Loosely inspired by real events, Jon Blåhed’s depiction of a religious sect in the northernmost part of Sweden is a riveting character study and a fascinating exploration of a linguistic minority: this is the first mainstream feature film where the dialogue is largely spoken in Meänkieli, the local dialect rooted in Finnish with some influence from Swedish.