When Dani and Christian, an American couple in a strained relationship, travel with friends to observe some once-in-a-lifetime midsummer celebrations in Hälsingland, Sweden, they appear to enter a natural idyll. In the pagan rituals they witness, however, fertility and regeneration are connected to grisly deaths, as the meadow they inhabit becomes the site of a living nightmare. The handmade clothing worn by the Hårga community provides a whitewashed backdrop for a painterly décor of brightly coloured flowers which pulsate and seem to breathe, while humans are drained of liveliness, some more quickly than others. The contrast between encroaching human stasis and plant aliveness reaches its height when the May Queen is crowned and dons a costume of flowers. Inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite era artwork of John Everett Millais and work by Belgian symbolist Léon Frédéric, the May Queen’s dress exudes a chilling vitality in which beauty and horror become one. 

Introduction by Sarah Cooper, Professor of Film Studies, King’s College London.