Horror Favourites – Hanna Bergholm

Out now from Picturehouse Entertainment Hanna Bergholm’s striking debut feature film Hatching is taking cinemas by storm. We managed to grab the amazing director for a quick chat about her favourite horror film.

In this darkly compelling fable, 12-year-old gymnast, Tinja (Siiri Solalinna), is desperate to please her image-obsessed mother, whose popular blog ‘Lovely Everyday Life’ presents their family’s idyllic existence as manicured suburban perfection. One day, after finding a wounded bird in the woods, Tinja brings its strange egg home, nestles it in her bed, and nurtures it until it hatches.

The creature that emerges becomes her closest friend and a living nightmare, plunging Tinja beneath the impeccable veneer of her family and into a twisted reality that her mother refuses to see. Hatching is the terrifying debut feature from Hanna Bergholm, heralding in an exciting new voice in horror.

With memorably outlandish practical effects from the FX teams behind Game of Thrones, Star Wars and The Dark Knight, Hatching is an audacious mix of horror, coming-of-age drama and social media satire and is like nothing you have ever seen before.

Hatching premiered at Sundance Film Festival, recently caused a stir at Sundance London and currently holds a 92% fresh rating across Rotten Tomatoes.

Below Hanna Bergholm chats about what horror film she loves the best:

“My Favourite Horror film is The Others by Alejandro Amenábar. Before seeing The Others I had always been afraid of horror films and avoided watching them; I had only ever seen the very basic, classic horror films. But, when I saw The Others I suddenly realised how deep, beautiful and meaningful a story can be told in the horror genre. I fell in love with that film and after that I was excited to watch many other kinds of horror films.

What I especially admired in The Others was the lighting of the film, the film is quite light for a horror film, there are very few dark shadows and some of the horror scenes even happen in bright daylight and that was one of my main influences for designing the light of my own film Hatching, where many scenes happen in light summer night or daylight.”

In cinemas now – check for screenings and get tickets at http://hatching.film