Hatching

In Hatching, 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 into a twisted reality that her mother refuses to see. Driven by grotesque practical SFX, this fractured fairy tale, the debut feature from Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, is part body horror, part creature feature and part coming of age nightmare. (Dir. by Hanna Bergholm, 2022, Finland/Sweden, in Finnish, 86 mins., Not Rated)