Interview With Hanna Bergholm, Director Of ‘Hatching’

This past year has been ripe with unique and mind-bending horror films, and I want to devour them all. Hatching, a new Finnish body horror movie written by Ilja Rautsi, is a far cry from the cookie cutter scary films that have been churned out in bulk lately. And if you know anything about me, you know I love body horror. To celebrate Hatching (which is hot off it’s world premiere at Sundance this past January) being release in theaters this week, I chatted with director Hanna Bergholm about what intrigued her about the film, her new appreciation for horror movies, what’s up next, and more!

PopHorror: I loved Hatching so much. It is one of the most unique films that I’ve seen in awhile. I think my jaw was on the floor the whole time. I’m really excited to speak with you.

Hanna Bergholm: I’m very happy to hear that!

PopHorror: What intrigued you about Hatching and made you want to be a part of it?

Hanna Bergholm: It all started from one sentence that our screenwriter Ilja Rautsi had and that he told me. The sentence was that a boy hatched his doppelganger out of an egg, and that is all he knows so far. I immediately thought that I hadn’t seen this story before and it can be something that I can really make as my own. And because I always like to tell the films in a way we experience the world as the main character experiences it. The only thing I wanted to change for this first idea was that the character is a girl and then we started to develop the story from that.

PopHorror: You said that you wanted to change it from a boy to a girl, which I appreciate that a lot. After reading the script, was there anything else that you were adamant about keeping in the film, no matter what?

Hanna Bergholm: Well, it was really about that it started with this one sentence and we developed the story from that. We worked very closely with the story and the script. The key things for me were – because there was an egg – I started to think, okay, the main the things are that since somebody’s hatching something that means she’s trying to hide some of her emotions or some side of the character. In Hatching, there’s some theme of motherhood or growing up. So all those themes came there and a kind of core story for us was about a girl who feels that she can’t show every side of her character or the mother doesn’t love her, so she always feels that she’s not quite enough. That is something that relates to this mother/daughter story in our film, but also on a larger scale, I think, into our society. I think many women feel that you always have to try a bit more in order to be enough for someone, in work, in society. So I wanted to, in a subtle way, portray that as well.

PopHorror: The mother is a great character. I especially loved when she had her little freak out in the car, when she’s screaming and banging her head. That was my favorite part. It was an amazing scene. Were you a horror fan before making Hatching?

Hanna Bergholm: Actually, no. I have always been afraid of horror films, but maybe exactly because of that, and because I have such a strong imagination, that I have always kind of imagined as a child all those monsters living in my wardrobe, so my ideas tend to have some horror elements in them anyway. I have made short films too, that have some horror elements in them, and when we started to land this story with Ilja, I had to watch many horror films. I was watching them in horror. It was like 100 horror films and I was watching them like this [she peeks through her fingers]. But then I got used to them and found how interesting the horror genre is because it can be so many different things. For example, something that is inside the character can get an external form, so the storytelling ways are very appealing and very interesting. And also this idea of a girl having an imaginary monster in a wardrobe is kind of my childhood memories.

PopHorror: I love that. Do you think then, that you would be open to making another horror film?

Hanna Bergholm: Yes! I think so, yeah. Yeah.

PopHorror: What is up next for you?

Hanna Bergholm: Well, next we are just writing a new film with Ilja Rautsi so we are continuing that work together. It is very cool. It is a fantasy drama with horror elements and it is about a mother who gets her first child, and suddenly she feels that she can’t connect with this baby because it’s just weird and screams all night long and sucks blood from her breasts. She starts to be convinced that this child is not actually human. That it’s something else, even though no one else admits it. It really tells about this kind of painful and difficult side of motherhood.

PopHorror: So another film with a mother and child dynamic and relationship. I’m intrigued. Just one last question for you today, Hanna. I know you said you weren’t a horror fan before, but what is your favorite scary movie?

Hanna Bergholm: Well, maybe my favorite one… I think it is still The Others by Alejandro Amenábar. It’s so beautiful and through the horror it feels like a very meaningful and deep story. And it has a very interesting woman as the protagonist. That was an eye-opener for me, how rich and interesting the horror genre can actually be.

 

Thank you so much to Hanna for taking the time to speak with us. Be sure to catch Hatching in theaters April 29, 2022!