With their second feature, Egghead Republic, premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, 4-14 September), Swedish filmmakers Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja push their taste for speculative fiction into anarchic new terrain. After the existential space voyage of Aniara [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (2018, also screened at Toronto), the duo adapt Arno Schmidt’s 1957 novel The Egghead Republic and filter it through Kågerman’s own time at Vice during the height of its influence. Screened in the Canadian gathering’s Discovery strand, this audacious cocktail of gonzo satire, indie-sleaze excess and dystopian science-fiction is as exhilarating as it is unhinged.

The film unfolds in an alternative 2004, where the Cold War never cooled and a nuclear bomb fell on Soviet Kazakhstan. Sonja Schmidt (Ella Rae Rappaport) is a naïve, dreamy would-be journalist who agrees to work as an unpaid intern for the Kalamazoo Herald, a paper owned by Dino Davis (Canada’s Tyler Labine), a swaggering media tycoon who embodies everything monstrous and ridiculous about the countercultural impresario. Davis reguarly drinks hectolitres of vodka, snorts cocaine by the fistful and bellows at everyone in sight, his moods swinging wildly between megalomania and despair. He is a complete idiot, yet a terrifyingly recognisable one.

Together, Sonja, Dino, camera operators Gemma (Emma Creed) and Turan (Arvina Kananian) embed with a military expedition to a Soviet-American base bordering a radioactive Kazakh wasteland. Rumours swirl of mutant creatures — irradiated centaurs among them — and Dino sees a chance to turn danger into spectacle. Once the crew break away from their escorts and venture deeper into the zone, the film plunges into surreal delirium.

The filmmakers embrace VHS textures, early 2000s hits (including Bloc Party’s “Banquet”) and lo-fi grit, conjuring a dystopia that looks like both the end of the world and a Vice documentary. This aesthetic choice enhances the grotesque humour, making every scene feel like a warped broadcast smuggled out of a parallel timeline.

Rappaport anchors the film with her portrayal of Sonja as both sympathetic and tragically gullible, a young woman convinced that enduring humiliation is the price of a big break. Opposite her, Labine tears through the screen with a deranged performance, channelling Dino’s idiocy and arrogance in equal measure. Their interplay drives the film’s rhythm: Sonja clings to her hopes while Dino spirals into self-parody, dragging her along.

Narratively, Egghead Republic races forwards at breakneck speed. The story thrives on mystery, wrong turns and wild tonal shifts, often swerving from gruesome to surreal in a single beat. The unpredictability keeps the audience on their toes, while the filmmakers’ refusal to tame the chaos underscores the pic’s critique of a media culture addicted to extremes. Meanwhile, the satire is sharp but never neat: Kågerman and Lilja prefer to revel in absurdity, forcing viewers to sift through chaos for meaning.

At times, the movie veers from genius into sheer madness. Its humour is broad, its surrealist detours excessive. Yet this is precisely what makes it unforgettable. Egghead Republic is a film of extremes: hilarious and gruesome, incisive and idiotic, at once inspired and deranged. It’s the kind of cinematic anomaly that some will dismiss as nonsense, while others will hail it as visionary. One thing is certain: forgetting it is not an option.

Egghead Republic is a Swedish production staged by YouSavedMe, the Swedish Film Institute, Film Stockholm, NonStop Entertainment, Gotlands Filmfond, Film i Dalarna and Pie in the Sky Productions. Best Friend Forever is selling it internationally.