Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #53. Johanna Pyykkö’s Ebba

Published on January 16, 2023

Ebba

Sweden-Finn filmmaker (based in Norway) Johanna Pyykkö almost grabs our most anticipated debut feature of the year but we nonetheless look forward to noir dramedy type cinema. She moved into production back in May on Ebba – lining up for a possible showing in Cannes Critics’ Week – the same section that profiled her 2019 short The Manila Lover. A project that landed some coin a couple of years back thanks to the ARTE Kino International folks, Pyykkö is a former assistant to Joachim Trier. This debut is produced by Eye Eye Pictures’ Dyveke Bjørkly Graver and Andrea Berentsen Ottmar.

Gist: This is about a 18-year-old girl who works as a housekeeper in Oslo’s upmarket port district. One day she meets a young Bulgarian man who is injured and has amnesia. Ebba will make him believe that they are lovers.

Release Date/Prediction: This should be a good bet for the Critic’s Week in Cannes.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).