Film Forum

Winner of the Golden Bear, 2025 Berlin International Film Festival. In this third installment of LOVE–SEX–DREAMS: THE OSLO TRILOGY, 17-year-old Johanne drifts and daydreams like any teenager, until one day her restlessness morphs into all-consuming passion for her charismatic French teacher, Johanna. From her vulnerable yet never maudlin inner monologue, to her frank confessions to her poet grandmother and over-curious mother, to nuanced scenes of intimacy with Johanna, Haugerud paints a complex, endearing, and intoxicating portrait of youthful infatuation and self-discovery, laced with the lightest touch of moral inquiry.

Presented with support from The R.G. Rifkind Foundation Endowment for Queer Cinema

2025     110 MIN.     NORWAY     STRAND RELEASING
IN NORWEGIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

“BEAUTIFULLY WEAVES TOGETHER THE NOVELISTIC AND THE SENSUAL. A story of hazy memories that’s also a city symphony, DREAMS elegantly captures the disorienting rush of first love and the frustrations and anguish that stem from romantic fantasies colliding with reality… Envelops us in the joys and confusion of feverish passion with no outlet.”
– Derek Smith, Slant

“VIVIDLY CAPTURES THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF FIRST LOVE. A most rewarding cumulation of recurrent themes and preoccupations in Haugerud’s previous pictures: the difficulty of intergenerational bonds; the confusing manifestations of love; the mutability of sexual identity; and the subtle power dynamics of amorous relationships.”
– Joseph Fahim, Sight & Sound

“Haugerud captures something vital about growing up in today’s world, as well as a universal story of first love blossoming at the moment we start to seek more out of life and existence.”
– Harrison Richlin, IndieWire

“An intensely compelling story about first love—poignant, witty, and brilliant—as insightful as it is beautifully directed and performed. One of the few films everyone on the Berlin Film Festival jury agreed on… so we gave it the biggest prize!”
– Todd Haynes

“It sweeps you up, assuredly and indeed dreamily… The film’s precise juxtapositions of sight and sound produce brilliant flashes of insight…and a cumulatively seductive, almost musical flow.”  
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker

“The light touch that Haugerud applies to hefty matters of the heart comes as no surprise in DREAMS … consistently surprising and elastic in its reach.”  
– Guy Lodge, Variety

“Haugerud’s SEX–LOVE–DREAMS trilogy — three overlapping words cleverly incorporated into the main title sequence — is an impressive achievement that’s admirable for the intricate layering of its themes and the overall lightness of touch. Savvy programmers and arthouse distributors should be lining up to play the three films as a package.”  
– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“Elegantly styled, sensitively acted and crafted with keen intelligence.”  
– Jonathan Romney, Screen

On the trilogy:
“One of the most engrossing European film trilogies in recent years… A wry, expansive treatise on gender politics, the politics of gender fluidity, and the moral conundrums underlying modern relationships.”
– Joseph Fahim, Sight & Sound