11/08/2025 - With her third feature film, provocative Finnish director Anna Eriksson takes us to the Desert of the Real, a kind of frenzied metaverse populated by lost souls

Three years after her delightfully disturbing second feature, W [+see also:
trailer
interview: Anna Eriksson
film profile], the Finnish director, singer and composer Anna Eriksson is returning to the Locarno Film Festival where she’s presenting E [+see also:
trailer
film profile] out of competition. This dystopian fairy tale is set in the Desert of the Real where mysterious characters - who turn out to be evil doppelgängers of people living in the “real world” - seem to wander aimlessly. Absurd, obscure and terrifying but also terribly intriguing, the universes depicted by Anna Eriksson are presented as alternatives to a hyper-regulated everyday life which leaves little room for genuinely expressing those emotions which society deems to be negative.

E - the third instalment of her film trilogy initiated with M [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anna Eriksson
film profile] - revolves around Eva Vogler, Finland’s former Prime Minister who causes a mighty scandal by shamelessly stripping off in front of the audience at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony. Thanks to messages left on her voicemail, we learn that Eva goes off grid immediately after the unfortunate event, without any kind of explanation. So where has Eva ended up? And most importantly, why did she behave so recklessly? The film doesn’t give any definite answers, but we soon realise that the place where she’s currently located isn’t our reality. Wandering across the sinuous dunes of a picture-postcard desert, the film’s protagonist is, in fact, trapped in a metaverse populated by characters both absurd and breathtakingly elegant. This gives rise to the hypothesis that the person who stripped off during the Nobel Prize ceremony isn’t the former Prime Minister of Finland but her doppelgänger who was looking to destroy her image and career. Sarcastic, scandalous and totally unbothered by rules, the characters surrounding Eva in the Desert of the Real represent the evil sides of the people they’ve cloned.

A kind of Dantesque destination which could have come straight from the pen of HR Giger, the universe depicted by the director is as attractive as it is frightening, like a toxic gas which we insist on breathing in, despite knowing it will slowly kill us without a trace. The choreography of the bodies and voices seems to be fuelled by countless references to the real world, which are twisted in nigh-on grotesque ways: Pasolini’s poems, the elegance of Jane Campion in The Piano and the provocative power of Fever Ray.

Whilst, in the real world, everyone mobilises to find Eva Vogler and to cover up the scandal caused by her grand gesture, in the Desert of the Real they couldn’t care less. One thing’s for sure: no-one has wondered whether Eva really wants to be forgiven. Increasingly attractive, organic and sprawling, the Desert of the Real holds her prisoner in a nightmare which both soothes and engulfs her. "I’m the one you sold and forgot, your ghost, your caricature, the one who’ll survive this desert, this orgy of doubles", her doppelgänger recites, like a litany, at the end of the film, as if to remind her that nothing and no-one could ever obliterate her dark side, her repressed self-centeredness and liberatory instinct.

E is a dark and fascinating film to be savoured in small doses, allowing ourselves to succumb to its strangeness without fear of getting lost. Ultimately, as one of the characters explains, “we all have our own deserts to cross”.

E was produced by Ihode Cursum Perficio Production.

(Translated from Italian)