Hanna Bergholm's 'Nightborn' - This child is a child of the forest, a child of the beast

Selected for the competition section of the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival. This is Hanna Bergholm's second feature film. Saga and Jon, a young married couple, dream of a perfect home and move to a mansion deep in the mountains of Finland where Saga spent her childhood. They have a child, but something is clearly wrong: the baby dislikes sunlight, won't stop crying no matter what they do, and bites the nipple with impossible strength during breastfeeding. The voices of those around them, including Jon, who tries to generalize and soothe the situation, do not reach her, and Saga is gradually drawn into the madness of the eerie forest, and so on. Actually, there was a film with a similar theme in last year's Berlin competition,"Mother's Baby". The programmer must like these kinds of films. Compared to the clumsiness of that work, this film seems superior in that it maintains the protagonist's perspective as an unreliable narrator and follows through to the end. Regarding the former in particular, the baby's face is never shown until the end, and it is captured as an eerie "presence" throughout; it was also good that it depicted body horror aspects where Saga's own body changes in the process of searching for the best way to raise her son, Kura. Regarding the latter, although there are some repetitive parts, I was impressed by the barrage of horror sequences centered on the eerie forest. Also, the relationships with her mother, who strikes back at Saga—who abnormally hates her baby—by saying she felt the same way about her, and her sister, who claims she was more pampered than herself, are interesting. It succeeds in adding a certain generalized perspective to the eccentric imagery from the mother's point of view, who insists that her relationship with her child is unique. That is precisely why the final scene, where those two perspectives overlap, is so effective.

・Film Data

Original Title: Yön lapsi
Running Time: 92 minutes
Director: Hanna Bergholm
Production: 2026 (Finland, Lithuania, France, UK)

・Rating: 60 points

・Berlin International Film Festival 2026 Other Films

★Competition Section Selection
1 . Kornél Mundruczó's 'At the Sea'The drifting identity of someone who cannot dance
2 . Alain Gomis's 'Dao'Guinea-Bissau, a 'perpetual circular motion' running through weddings and funerals
3 . Anke Blondé's 'Dust'The end of the Belgian version of 'BlackBerry'
4 . Grant Gee's 'Everybody Digs Bill Evans'On the loss and slow death of Bill Evans
5 . Fernando Eimbcke's 'Flies'Mexico, a pseudo-parent-child relationship and Space Invaders
6 . Eva Trobisch's 'Home Stories'Where does East German identity lie?
7 . Leyla Bouzid's 'In a Whisper'Tunisia, on queerness, tradition, and family
11 . Yoshitoshi Shinomiya's 'When the Hanairokyou Dawns'Shuhari fireworks, the mastery of fireworks
12 . Hanna Bergholm's 'Hatching'This child is a child of the forest, a child of the beast
13 . Geneviève Dulude-De Celles's 'Nina Roza'A man confronting his past in Bulgaria
14 . Lance Hammer's 'Queen at Sea'On dementia and the capacity for sexual consent
15 . Markus Schleinzer's 'Rose''Because you become freer when you wear pants'
16 . Karim Aïnouz's 'Rosebush Pruning'A portrait of an ugly bourgeois family
17 . Emin Alper's 'Salvation'Turkey, in the aftermath of a land dispute
18 . Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's 'Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars'Chad, are we trying to talk about women's freedom and rights...?
19 . Anthony Chen's 'We Are All Strangers'Singapore, the love and bonds of a family
20 . Warwick Thornton's 'Wolfram'An Aboriginal boys' gang escape western
21 . İlker Çatak's 'Yellow Letters'Turkey, a portrait of an artist couple who criticized the government
22 . Anna Fitch & Banker White's 'Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird)'The life of my best friend Yolanda Shay

★Perspectives Section Selection
1 . Kosara Mitić '17'North Macedonia, a nightmare school trip
5 . Manon Coubia 'Forest High'Quiet time flowing in a mountain hut in the Northern Alps
8 . Dara Van Dusen 'A Prayer for the Dying'This is a true plague western!
10 . Lorenzo Ferro & Lucas Vignale 'River Train'Argentina, the escape of a boy burdened with the responsibilities of masculinity
13 . Muriel d'Ansembourg 'Truly Naked'Boys and girls living in a modern world flooded with pornography