Thelma

Raised in a strict Christian household, Thelma starts having seizures after moving to Oslo for university. The seizures come with uncontrolled telekinesis, and the trigger is clear: her feelings for Anja, a woman in her class. After a run of realist dramas, Joachim Trier moves into the supernatural without making a genre film. This is a family story about repression and shame told in the language of horror, and the power itself is inherited, passed down from Thelma's grandmother. Eili Harboe leads with Kaya Wilkins as Anja, Henrik Rafaelsen as her father and Ellen Dorrit Petersen as her mother. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 92 percent. Critics praised the handling of sexuality and repression through the supernatural, with one writing that it plays with the female Gothic, where women are at once the victims and the agents of change. The comparisons went mostly to Carrie and Let the Right One In. Norway submitted it for the 90th Academy Awards without making the shortlist. It won the San Diego Film Critics Society foreign film award and the Méliès d'Or. Who it is for: viewers who like slow, cold, visually precise Nordic thrillers. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. For its first half the film says almost nothing out loud.