E (in person: Anna Eriksson)

Anna Eriksson: E (FI 2025). Shot in the Kalahari desert.

Finland 2025.

Director: Anna Eriksson

Starring: Anna Eriksson, Parco Lee, Johrne Van Huyssteen, Jooseppi Pyykkö, Johannes Haasbroek

Languages: English, Swedish

86 min

    Distributor: Pirkanmaan elokuvakeskus, subtitles: Finnish, English

    Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)

    In person: Anna Eriksson. Hosted by Pekka Lanerva. With Juha Elomäki, Matti Pyykkö, Vivan Manat, Elia Husten, Marlena Gröngård, Parco Lee, Jooseppi Pyykkö, Elina Pelin, Tuomas Seppänen, Teijo Pellinen, Pietari Kaakkomäki. [spelling unchecked]. Q&A hosted by Mari Mantela.

    Viewed at Kinopalatsi 1, Helsinki, Wed 24.9.2025 at 18.30–19.56

Joonas Nykänen (HIFF 2025): "In the climax of Anna Eriksson’s film trilogy, Finland’s former Prime Minister causes a scandal at the Nobel Gala and vanishes into the desert of reality."

"Anna Eriksson’s latest work of art, E, the climax of her letter trilogy. The electric nightmare peppered with self-aware dark humour brings some much needed nervous vibrations into Finnish cinema, a restlessness reminiscent of von Trier, Lynch, Denis, Bergman and even Żuławski."

"Rhythm, soundscape, shot composition. Models. Unlike anything we’ve seen before in our periphery. Eriksson’s work is on a stellar plane of its own: unique and endlessly fascinating. More distilled emotion than feigned sentimentality, more a stick of dynamite than ordinary sticky art."

"As a film about dunes, it far surpasses the recent overinflated Hollywood spectacles. E is a reminder that much before all that commercial nonsense films like Woman in the Dunes (1964) were made."

"Eriksson’s film is something completely different from the harmless dreams we are used to seeing in Finnish cinema. Merely the fact that it does not attempt to cheaply dilute children’s Hollywood fluff is a delightful promise about the new direction of Finnish film as something other than an echo of American cinema." Joonas Nykänen (translated by Adrian Murtomäki)

"Anna Erikssonin elokuvatrilogian huipennuksessa Suomen ex-pääministeri aiheuttaa skandaalin Nobel-gaalassa ja katoaa todellisuuden autiomaahan."

"Anna Erikssonin tuorein taideteos E, kirjaintrilogian kliimaksi, sähköinen painajainen, jonka pimeä huumori uskaltaa nauraa itselleen, tuo kotimaiseen elokuvaan kaivattua hermostunutta väreilyä, samankaltaista levottomuutta, jota voi löytää von Trieriltä, Lynchiltä, Denisiltä, Bergmanilta tai jopa Żuławskilta."

"Rytmi, äänimaisema, kuvasommittelu. Mallit. Mitään tällaista emme ole vielä periferiassamme aiemmin nähneet. Erikssonin teos on täysin oma tähtensä: omaperäinen ja pohjattoman mielenkiintoinen. Enemmänkin tislattua tunnetta kuin teeskenneltyä tunteilua, enemmänkin TNT:tä kuin tavallista tahnaista taidetta."

"Se on myös dyynielokuvana mielenkiintoisempi kuin tuoreimmat ylipitkät Hollywood-dyynitehostespektaakkelit. E muistuttaa, että paljon ennen tuota kaupallista höttöä tehtiin sellaisiakin elokuvia kuin Dyynien daami (1964)."

"Erikssonin elokuva on jotain muuta kuin sitä harmitonta unta, johon olemme kotimaisessa elokuvassa tottuneet. Jo siinä, ettei se lähde halpahintaisesti laimentamaan lapsille suunnattua Hollywood-hattaraa, on ilahduttava lupaus kotimaisen elokuvan uudesta suunnasta muunakin kuin yhdysvaltalaisen elokuvan kaikuna ja kopiona." Joonas Nykänen

AA: Anna Eriksson's E is a desert movie, and this desert looks different from the others.

Eriksson and her cinematographer husband Matti Pyykkö only show the desert, never the sky.

William K. Everson commented on the two greatest masters of the Western by saying that in William S. Hart's cinema land (often a desert) is the dominant motif and the skyline is high in the frame. With John Ford, the skyline is low, and the action unfolds under a wide open sky.

In E, there is no sky at all. No higher powers. No transcendence.

Eriksson & Pyykkö only shot at dusk. This is no dazzling brilliant Sahara desert like in Lawrence of Arabia or Io capitano.

In modern and modernist cinema, the desert was a prominent landscape-soulscape particularly in Michelangelo Antonioni's movies Il deserto rosso, Zabriskie Point and Profession: Reporter. The last mentioned is also, like E, about a loss of identity and doubles. The void has a multiple meaning. It reflects the emptiness of contemporary life but also a freedom and purity from which something new may emerge.

I was intrigued about the meaning of Eriksson's letter trilogy M - W - E. I was thinking about Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, filmed by Frank Tashlin as The Alphabet Murders. Those murders are linked to double initials, as were the subsequent real-life Alphabet murders (the Double Initial murders). But I was also thinking about Georges Perec's Oulipo novel Life: A User's Manual with its letter games.

In the Q&A after the screening, Mari Mantela asked Eriksson the question, and the answer was L'Hôpital de la Salpêtrière. Eriksson had been impressed by Asti Hustvedt's book Medical Muses: the Culture of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris (2011) in which it turns out that the patients were called by a capital letter only.

This gets me to thinking about the trilogy again. M was about a parallel being to Marilyn Monroe, though clearly not her. The protagonist of W was Madame Europa. The main person of E is Eva Vogler, a public figure who has stopped speaking like Elisabet Vogler in Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Bergman was fascinated by the fact that "persona" means "mask". Eriksson is fascinated by another Jungian concept, "the shadow", who can take over, with the consequence that we transform into a shadow of our former self. This takeover is acute in contemporary "social media".

Eva Vogler seems to be a parallel being or parasite for Sanna Marin, in a ludicrous way. I do not know what to think about this. Is this about a woman being a wolf to a woman? It does not make sense. But this is about a parallel reality / unreality, in which the Nobel Peace Prize gala has been transferred from Oslo to Stockholm.

I, the incorrigible sociologist, think that 19th century hysteria such as treated at la Salpêtrière, was a valid reaction to the oppression of women at the time: no political rights, no property rights, education restricted, many professions off limits, husband in charge of everything, with no safe contraception or abortion, rape and harassment unbridled. Men were free to explore, women, who mature earlier, were repressed in their natural desire for happiness.

The opening involves the anasyrma: exposing one's genitals or derrière with the intention of disgrace and outrage. (We only hear about it. The film never leaves the desert.) Anasyrma is an ancient tradition, also in Finnish heritage and culture (here called harakointi), famously in Aleksis Kivi's play The Betrothal, where Herrojen Eeva exposes her yoni to the horrified menfolk. In the cinema the part was played by the formidable Mirjami Kuosmanen, known to her closest by the nickname "Hurjami" [untranslatable, it means "the wild one"].

Anna Eriksson is "Hurjami" reincarnated.

Erik Blomberg: Kihlaus / The Betrothal (FI 1955). Herrojen Eeva (Mirjami Kuosmanen) performs the anasyrma / harakointi to Tailor Eenokki (Heimo Lepistö).