Dreams

The first Norwegian film to win the Golden Bear, awarded at the Berlinale in February 2025 to the third and last part of Dag Johan Haugerud's Oslo trilogy — Sex, Love and Dreams, all shot in the same year, all released within twelve months, each standing alone. Haugerud was a librarian and novelist before he was a filmmaker, and it shows in the best way.

Ella Øverbye plays Johanne, seventeen, who develops an overwhelming attachment to her French teacher, played by Selome Emnetu, and records every detail in a notebook. When her mother (Ane Dahl Torp) and her grandmother (Anne Marit Jacobsen), a published poet, read what she has written, the household argument that follows is only partly about what happened — it is also about whether the writing is any good, and who has the right to publish it.

The film is largely narrated by Johanne's own text, which lets Haugerud keep the physical events off-screen while making the interior life the actual subject. Reviewers described it as the rare film about adolescent desire that takes the adolescent's prose seriously; it holds 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and 3.85 on Letterboxd from 31,000 ratings. If it lands, the other two parts of the trilogy are waiting.