IFFR 2025 Big Screen Competition
Review: Orenda
by Olivia Popp
- Spectres of lost faith, guilt and redemption hang over Pirjo Honkasalo’s contemplative new film, the first narrative feature from the Finnish director after more than ten years

One must surrender to the unknown to truly discover Finnish director Pirjo Honkasalo’s Orenda [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which marks her return to the narrative-feature scene more than ten years after Concrete Night [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. As Finland’s submission to the Academy Awards at the time, Concrete Night was co-penned by her partner and artistic collaborator Pirkko Saisio, who has now come to also serve as the screenwriter and one of the stars for Honkasalo’s newest film, which centres on the tenuous connection between two women. Orenda is receiving back-to-back premieres, beginning with IFFR’s Big Screen Competition for its world premiere, then having just enjoyed its Nordic bow at Göteborg on 1 February, and next headed towards its Finnish premiere at the Tampere Film Festival as the opening film on 3 March. The movie will also be released in Finnish cinemas on 17 April.
Opera singer Nora (Alma Pöysti, who most recently achieved international recognition for her Golden Globe-nominated role in Fallen Leaves [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) travels to a Finnish archipelago (brought to life primarily on the island of Jurmo, near Turku) after the death of her husband, where she encounters Natalia (Saisio), a cryptic and standoffish older priest facing her own struggles. But the lives of the two women are intertwined in ways that are revealed over the course of the film, just as both are mourning the fates of their partners on different timelines, through different forms of loss.
Throughout the film, characters are reminded to consider the titular concept of “orenda”, an untranslatable term from various native peoples of North America that captures the idea of energy and power as exerted through all living beings. Such a word lends itself to the weightiness of the feature’s themes, where the narrative through-line is felt viscerally through the vastness and solitude of the landscape, rather than through any particular incidents. Likewise, at nearly two hours long, its gravitas hits best on a big screen when the viewer can afford to succumb to the overwhelming visual and auditory aspects of the work, such as the wandering camerawork by Max Smeds, who makes his feature debut as DoP.
Initially, the two women are hostile towards each other out of hesitation and their naturally guarded personalities, with Orenda remaining a careful two-hander outside of smaller interactions with other characters. Nora and Natalia are both haunted by unexplained dreams of women dressed in white, adding yet another spiritual dimension to the movie. The younger woman’s life is further punctuated by the presence of a young, unnamed boy (Luca Leino) who lives with Natalia; he acts almost as an informal spiritual guide for the younger woman, who is struggling to release herself from a stiff frame of mind. The boy partakes in nature-based rituals on the beach, representing everything that exists beyond the empirical world. But Orenda never definitely settles into magical territory. Instead, its mystics and aspects beyond the façade of reality are felt subliminally through the film’s ambience and its emotional conversations, just like in everyday life.
Honkasalo’s approach here is a double-edged sword: at times, the material feels overly dense, and some viewers may struggle to connect with its more philosophical concept-dropping. However, Orenda is designed to arouse something in the viewer around topics of forgiveness, faith, desire and guilt – and not necessarily provide a very specific journey. It rewards patient viewers with food for thought if one embraces its emotional approach, rather than interrogating it.
Orenda is a production led by Finland’s Bufo, co-produced by Estonia’s Allfilm and Sweden’s Plattform Produktion. The Yellow Affair is handling its international sales.
Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.