On Longing, Wanting, and Needing: Desire in Nordic Cinema at Göteborg 2026

Film critic Jenni Zylka reflects on how recent Nordic films at the Göteborg Film Festival articulate longing, wanting, and needing through desire, power, and emotional transformation. Drawing on classical screenwriting theory, the article traces how female-centered narratives reframe motivation, agency, and vulnerability.

According to classical screenwriting theory, a film character has a “want” and a “need.” The “want” is the goal they strive to achieve—an external, conscious motivation, a (often material) reward: someone wants to be successful, or rich, or in a happy relationship. The “need,” on the other hand, drives the character from within; it is their true, internalized, often unconscious need, connected to a realization: being rich does not bring happiness—and certainly does not guarantee love. Character transformation, however, does.

Directed desire, the physical or ideal “longing,” lies somewhat between these two motivations. It is also strongly present in the films of this year’s Göteborg Film Festival. In the eight films of the Nordic Competition, there was a great deal of wanting, needing, and desiring.

Julia Thelin’s The Patron (Mecenaten, 2026, Julia Thelin), for example, explores desire within a classicism plot, shaking up gender aspects like dice in a cup. A cleaning woman with impostor tendencies swaps roles with a gallery owner on vacation, whose house she is cleaning. In the gallery owner’s guise, she attends a swanky art opening—and, on a whim, takes two younger waiters back to the (stranger’s) villa, which she presents as her own.

Who desires whom quickly becomes blurred; who exploits and deceives whom also becomes blurred. The men want to pass off their own art as art to the supposed gallery owner, but she simply enjoys making the (male) puppets dance. In one scene, the woman encourages the two young artists to undress, to dance, and finally to kiss each other. Later, she has sex with one; the other, whom she actually desires, withdraws.

The Swedish filmmaker repeatedly has the three characters rebuff their own desires until the situation finally escalates. Besides the unusual female impostor character, her story is also unusual—rarely are male characters portrayed so reactively, or female characters so actively.

The Norwegian film Butterfly (2025, Itonje Søimer Guttormsen) by Itonje Søimer Guttormsen also deals with desire—but with its opposite as well. After the death of their mother, two very different sisters reunite on the Canary Island where they spent their childhood with this independent, esoteric, and somewhat irresponsible woman. The deceased leaves behind a secret surrounding her death—and a much younger partner.

Guttormsen speaks volumes about waning, or perhaps simply altered, desire when she has this enigmatic lover answer the question of whether he was not too young for their mother with the meaningful reply: “You see the flesh, I see the soul.” The ever-convincing Renate Reinsve, as a demanding yet strained performance artist, learns as much about her true needs as her quieter older sister, played by Helene Bjørneby, throughout the film. Both discover that their sisterly relationship is more important than anything else. After all, siblings are usually the people who have known each other the longest.

In Tell Everyone (Kerro kaikille, 2026, Alli Haapasalo), Finnish director Alli Haapasalo also tells a drama of desires and deprivations. Set in 1898, her story depicts a young woman banished to an island where independent, nonconformist women live like prisoners in a supervised institution. After having her clothes delivered—a small part of her desire—and thus reminding her fellow inmates of their needs, she eventually begins working for a quiet fisherman.

Haapasalo captures the development and slow growth of desire between the two in beautiful, tactilely powerful images. In the end, it is not the bearded man who turns out to be the “need”—it is friendship.

In The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er, 2026, Hlynur Pálmason), Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason arranges his eccentric yet highly charming characters around their needs in such surprising ways that every second of his amusing film is captivating. A reserved artist seeks recognition for her works, shaped by tides and time, but finds only an arrogant, self-proclaimed art expert from Sweden.

The fact that the mainland visitor steals an egg from a goose living on the island is bitterly punished shortly afterward, as the birds take revenge and strike back: a flock of birds (deliberately?) gets sucked into the nozzle of the single-engine plane the snob intends to use to fly back—and it crashes. Meanwhile, the artist’s ex-husband still desires her. Pálmason, whose distinctive style nevertheless echoes Roy Andersson, stages male desire classically as tender longing through dreamy glances up her skirt.

Finally, the plot center of Emilie Thalund’s sensitive and empowering coming-of-age debut Weightless (Vægtløs, 2025, Emilie Thalund)—which we awarded the FIPRESCI Prize for outstanding direction—is desire itself. Overweight 15-year-old Lea, who is supposed to experience both healthy eating and a good time at a summer “health camp,” falls for a tall, adult sports coach.

But what she thinks she is craving and what she experiences are two very different things. The adult takes advantage of the situation, and an assault occurs. Perhaps Lea manages to process the experience with the help of the female solidarity she encounters. Her “want” seems to be the handsome blond man, but her “need” is the realization of her true desire.

If you accompany her on her journey, you will experience all the stages of wanting and needing, of craving and longing—and in the end, you will be satisfied and happy to have witnessed all of this.

Jenny Zylka
© FIPRESCI 2026