Each year, the New Directors Competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival showcases some of the most promising emerging voices in international cinema. This year, Marlene Emilie Lyngstad’s debut feature Cute has been selected to premiere in the programme.
Troubled by forbidden feelings for his seven-year-old stepdaughter, Richard decides to leave his girlfriend. He retreats to his childhood home to renovate ahead of its sale, but his self-imposed exile is disrupted by the childlike presence of his mother's caregiver, Stella. He soon discovers her double life as a Lolita camgirl, and the two develop a transgressive surrogate father-daughter relationship. Their constructed reality begins to unravel when the stepdaughter he left behind reaches out.
Norwegian filmmaker Marlene Emilie Lyngstad, who is based in Denmark and graduated from the National Film School of Denmark, makes her feature debut with Cute. Among her previous short films is Norwegian Offspring (2023), which won First Prize in La Cinef, the Cannes Film Festival competition for films made by film school students.
Cute is written by Marlene Emilie Lyngstad and Emilie Koefoed Larsen and produced by Carl Osbæck Adelkilde for Nordisk Film Production, with support from the Danish Film Institute’s talent development scheme, New Danish Screen.
The film will be released in Danish cinemas on 26 November.
Danish co-production selected for the main competition
Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s Growth of the Soil will have its European premiere in the festival’s Official Competition.
Growth of the Soil is an epic and deeply human story about survival, guilt, freedom, and love—and above all, the enduring struggle between humanity and nature, tradition and modernity.
The screenplay is written by Hans Petter Moland, Gard B. Eidsvold and Chris Sanger. The film is produced by Birgitte Skov for Scanbox Production, with Asta August and Herbert Nordrum in the leading roles.
Growth of the Soil is supported by the Danish Film Institute and will open in Danish cinemas on 10 December.
