North American Premiere
Edith (Force Majeure’s Lisa Loven Kongsli), a journalist in her 40s, chose to become a single mother through an anonymous sperm donor, believing she could build a life on her own terms. She is now the happy mother of a five-year-old son. But the emotional weight of parenting alone begins to wear on her, and doubts creep in. When she unexpectedly discovers the donor’s identity—a nearby successful game developer named Niels (The Worst Person in the World’s Herbert Nordrum)—curiosity leads her to meet him on the pretext of an interview. What begins as a calculated encounter gradually deepens into a genuine connection, driving Edith to sink deeper into lies and endanger the fragile balance of the life she has built.
Janicke Askevold’s well-observed, wryly entertaining debut feature deftly explores the emotional minefield of modern motherhood. And it finds an ideal lead in Kongsli, who is deeply expressive, even when silent and still. Her anxieties and ethical dilemmas are palpable, resulting in a wholly authentic and highly engrossing human drama.
Community Partner
Janicke Askevold
Lisa Loven Kongsli, Herbert Nordrum
Norway/Latvia/Lithuania/
Denmark/Finland
2025
In Norwegian and English with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits
Executive Producer
Magne Lyngner
Producer
Rebekka Rognøy, Gary Cranner, Magnus Nygaard Albertsen
Screenwriter
Janicke Askevold, Jørgen Færøy Flasnes, Mads Stegger
Cinematography
Torjus Thesen
Editor
Patrick Larsgaard
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Turner & Constable
Filmed as a supplement to a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain happening right now, this doc in the popular Exhibition on Screen series allows us to view these competitive, complementary English landscape artists side by side.
The President's Cake
Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.
Sinners
2025's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.
Montreal, ma belle
In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.