Ninjababy

Yngvild Sve Flikke adapted Inga Sætre's graphic novel Fallteknikk into the funniest Norwegian film of its decade, and the European Film Academy gave it Best Comedy in 2021. It arrived in the same stretch as The Worst Person in the World and shares its interest in women in their twenties who have not decided anything yet, but it is considerably ruder.

Rakel draws, drinks, sleeps around and has told everyone she intends to be a forensic scientist or possibly an astronaut. A trip to the doctor reveals a pregnancy already six months along, which she has managed not to notice. From that point a hand-drawn foetus — sarcastic, insistent, named Ninjababy — appears over the live action to conduct a running argument with her about what she is going to do. Kristine Kujath Thorp plays Rakel with total absence of self-pity, and the animation, integrated by Flikke throughout, is the film's most inspired decision: it externalises the argument without softening it.

What makes it more than a premise is the honesty about ambivalence. The film declines to convert Rakel into someone who wanted this, and it treats adoption, abortion and keeping the child as three genuinely open options rather than a moral hierarchy. Nordic comedy is often praised for deadpan; this one earns its laughs and then keeps going somewhere more difficult.