The Oslo Stories Trilogy (Sex, Dreams, Love) is an ambitious set of films from novelist-turned-filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud, contemplating romance, intimacy, and desire in contemporary Norway.

A Berlin Golden Bear Winner (2025), Dreams is a coming-of-age story about Johane, who falls in love for the first time with her teacher. Preserving her emotions and experiences in her journal, she shows the work to her mother and grandmother. Initially shocked, they soon see the literary potential and debate whether to encourage its publication, setting in motion a frank exploration of their differing views on love, sexuality, and self-discovery.

Witty, gentle, and eye-opening, Haugerud charts a full investigation on what contemporary love means in this series of films about romantic, sexual, philosophical, and creative awakenings.

The Garden Cinema View:

The last to be filmed (but second chronologically) in this loose trilogy of human relations has the clearest narrative structure of the trio, whilst still retaining a strong visual flair, and digressions into moments of quiet poetry. Whilst the film is heavy with voiceover narration, this seems fitting for a story about writers, and indeed about an interior world of fantasy and desire. At the core of Dreams is an ethical issue concerning safeguarding and grooming, and this plays out intelligently, with scenes involving the teenage protagonist, her mother and grandmother, showing the contrasting wisdom and blind spots of these three generations of women. Dag Johan Haugerud films Oslo in close detail, picking out the communities and contradictions of a city which contains wonderful nature, characterful districts, and the impersonal surfaces of global capitalism.  

Cast:
Ella Øverbye, Selome Emnetu, Anne Marit Jacobsen, Ane Dahl Torp