Finnish filmmaker Hanna Bergholm brought her new feature Nightborn into the main competition at the Berlin International Film Festival this weekend, positioning the psychological horror tale as a pointed look at early parenthood and the bodily realities that often get flattened in screen depictions of motherhood.
In the film, Seidi Haarla plays Saga, who moves with her British husband, Jon (played by Rupert Grint), to a remote home in the Finnish forest to start a family. After the baby is born, Saga becomes convinced something is wrong, while people around her dismiss her fears, leaving the couple’s relationship under pressure.
At a Berlin appearance tied to the premiere, Bergholm said she wanted to portray “difficult emotions” that surface for mothers and fathers and to confront taboos around motherhood, including the physical aftermath of childbirth. “I wanted to show the birth of people and the blood in that,” she said. Grint, speaking about taking the role as he was becoming a parent himself, called the experience “such a scary” one.
Bergholm also framed the story as a subjective experience, saying audiences can decide how much of what Saga perceives is real. Early festival reactions have split along familiar genre lines: some write-ups praised the film’s commitment to graphic detail and bleak humor, while others argued the material plays more effectively as suspense than as social commentary.
Craft decisions became part of the conversation around the film, with Bergholm emphasizing tactile effects over digital polish and describing an effects-driven approach to the baby’s movement and sound design in a recent interview published during the festival. International sales are being handled by Goodfellas alongside Anonymous Content.
