“Sex”, interview with director Dag Johan Haugerud

February 24, 2024

Dag Johan Haugerud, director of Sex : “The film explores the boundaries we establish in our lives around sex and gender”

“Sex”, interview with director Dag Johan Haugerud Chiara Nicoletti

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“Sex” by Dag Johan Haugerud is screening in the Panorama section of the 74th Berlinale. The film is the first part of a trilogy SEX DREAMS LOVE and these three freestanding films all revolve around desire identity, and the longing for freedom.

At the Berlinale, Dag Johan Haugerud declares about the film: “With SEX, I wanted to make an entertaining, amusing, and thoughtful film about two chimney sweepers who experience unexpected challenges regarding sex and gender”

“Sex” focuses its attention on exploring our limits when it comes to sexuality and gender trying to understand how free we think we are to follow the path our sexuality leads us on.

The film just won the Europa Cinemas Label as best European film in the Panorama section of the 2024 Berlin Film Festival.

Plot

Two chimney sweeps living in monogamous, heterosexual marriages both end up in situations that challenge their views on sexuality and gender roles. One has a sexual encounter with another man, without himself experiencing it either as an expression of homosexual longings or infidelity. The other suddenly experiences nocturnal dreams in which he is seen as a woman. This confuses and disturbs him. He begins to wonder to what extent the gaze of others shapes his personality and whether there are aspects of himself that he has suppressed, thereby limiting himself.
In Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex, the chimney is swept before we get down to business. Whether hetero or homo, witty wordplay challenges normative images of men and society in modern urban Norway.

Written by: Chiara Nicoletti

Guest

Dag Johan Haugerud