Cineuropa sat down with Hanna Bergholm, whose second film, Nightborn [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Hanna Bergholm
fiche film], is competing for the Golden Bear in the competition of the 76th Berlinale. The director and co-writer of this peculiar horror breaks down the central themes of the movie, and discusses the governmental cuts for art and culture in her native Finland.

Cineuropa: What stories or folktales did you read as a little girl?
Hanna Bergholm: My parents read me the Brothers Grimm tales – I think that Nightborn is kind of like a Grimm tale. Also, One Thousand and One Nights, Hans Christian Andersen’s tales and Finnish fairy tales written about a century ago by Anni Swan. She was a wonderful storyteller; she wrote very dark fables set in forests. I always loved fables.

Did any of them in particular inspire you?
I didn't follow the template of any existing folklore story, but in a way, they all affected me – I’ve grown up with them. I feel that old fables can be scary and quite weird, but there’s something you can really connect to in them. In a way, we are all alike, and we share similar emotions, so that’s why I have always loved them.

Today, we don’t have fairy tales. Instead, we have Instagram, which shows stories of “perfect” lives and flawless visions of motherhood, promising us we can all have it. Your film dismantles illusions like these. How does it make you feel to destroy this image?
I wanted to show that the protagonist, Saga, thinks she has to perform or fulfil ideas that come from the outside. I wanted to highlight this by showing how she decorates the nursery or organises the naming party. It’s overly perfect. Even though Saga feels that her baby is horrifying and what is happening to her body is horrible, in a way, this striving for perfect decoration and appearance is even more horrifying.

Saga is told that she is the problem and is constantly given advice, but in fact, she is the only one who can see the situation and her baby with any clarity. Society often stifles women and forbids them from listening to their intuition.
I really wanted to deal with that. It’s about being a woman and about parenthood, too. The good thing about the latter is that we have a lot of advice on how to raise a child, and some of it is really good, but often, these pieces of advice contradict each other. In the end, being a parent is more about really listening to your child and facing the fact that you actually know them very well if you pay attention to their special needs. It’s also about listening to yourself because, as women, we are often told how we should be.

What was also important for me was to show physicality. I find it strange that in films, we show explosions and blood, and killing is almost considered cool. But we rarely show childbirth. Everyone goes to the toilet, but we never see that. Women have periods, but we rarely see that either. Until recently, even menstrual blood was blue in advertisements. In a way, everything that is female and feminine in our bodies is hushed up. No matter if we have children, nothing should happen to our bodies – our stomachs should stay flat, we should always look 20 years old… I wanted to show something different.

Women often learn how to carry themselves from their mothers. In both of your films, you show mother-daughter relationships filled with unease. What draws you to this theme?
The relationship with one’s parents, especially the mother-daughter relationship, is profound, and so many things stem from it. That’s why I wanted to deal with it in both of my films. In each movie, the mother is quite different, and in Nightborn, I also wanted to show that Saga’s mother is not a typical grandmother. It is often assumed that grandmothers should be a certain way – very warm and eager to spend time with the grandchild. But what if they don’t actually like it that much?

Were you always someone who challenged cultural illusions or norms?
Yes. It’s important for art, in general, to venture out of its comfort zone because that’s how we experience and discover something new, even if at first it seems strange.

That’s one of art’s most important missions. Unfortunately, some governments, including Finland’s, are introducing budget cuts for arts and culture.
I think it’s scary and horrifying when we start cutting cultural funding. In many parts of the world, artists are being silenced and told what they should say or do. We have to remember that even staying silent is a political decision, and as human beings, we should speak out against violence and speak up for justice. It’s important. We shouldn’t dictate to artists what their films or works of art should be like, because there is value in different kinds of expression. Not every film can deal with every topic in the world, but it’s important that artists are not silenced.

When it comes to cultural funding, we have to remember a basic fact: films cost a lot because many people make them – we provide many jobs. We give people a voice. If, in my case, Finnish cinema travels around the world, Finnish culture gains a voice abroad. It is a small culture, and it’s important for cultures like this to be heard.