Festival Predictions

2022 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Kjersti Helen Rasmussen’s The Nightmare

Published on November 24, 2021

If Radha Blank can get her game face on breaking out her feature film debut when belonging to the 40-something club, then that late bloomer logic might apply here for Norwegian helmer Kjersti Helen Rasmussen. Working in commercials, writing the feature The Tunnel (2019) and directing short films that would be selected for genre film fests, for her feature debut she bed sheet tied Eili Harboe – the lead from Joachim Trier’s Thelma. The Nightmare (Marerittet) is essentially a tale about becoming a mother and the ordeal of getting a proper night’s sleep. So we can expect it to hit that sweet spot that Norwegians a re good at in terms of Midnight divertissement.

Gist: Mona (Eili Harboe) moves into a big apartment in an old building with her boyfriend Robby (Herman Tømmeraas), who has just landed his dream job, and soon falls pregnant with their first child. She is plagued by bad dreams, and when the new-born baby next door dies, her crippling nightmares intensify.

Production Co./Producers: John Einar Hagen, Einar Loftesnes.

Prediction: MIDNIGHT.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. Wildbunch (domestic, international).

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).