Dag Johan Haugerud recently turned 60. Being Scandinavian, he doesn’t look it. Trim and neat, he could easily pass for 20 years younger. But, sure enough, Haugerud has spent decades writing novels, making films and, until budget cuts intervened, working as a librarian at the Norwegian Academy of Music.
It would be overstating the case to argue that overnight celebrity has visited him later in life. But, after winning the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, he suddenly finds himself among the front tier of European film-makers.
“I don’t know how people see me,” he says in his calm way. “I am just trying to go on with my work, really. It was obviously very nice to win the Golden Bear, but I don’t think it affects me that much. Probably – or hopefully – it will be easier to make the next film. But I don’t think that’s necessarily so.”
The prize came for one prong of his complex, beautiful Oslo Stories trilogy. Dreams (Sex Love) tells the story of a teenage girl who turns her obsession with a teacher into a memoir that kicks up ethical quandaries as it edges to publication. That Bear winner sits loosely beside episodes entitled Sex, in which two chimney sweeps discuss sexual adventures, and Love, following two relationships that play out on a ferry to the Nesodden peninsula, across the water from Olso.
The films are being released throughout this month, but don’t worry if you’ve missed the first title. You can always catch up later.
“Maybe it’s a good thing that these films can work in every possible order,” says the director. “That’s maybe a strength. I wasn’t opposed to that.”
I am interested in life as a librarian who, when not cataloguing texts, makes films and writes books. One can’t help but think of Philip Larkin. That famously pessimistic English poet spent 30 years working in the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull.
“It’s very funny that you mentioned Philip Larkin, because I’m a very big fan of him,” says Haugerud. “There are many quotes from him in the films. I use him quite regularly. But I had been working as a librarian – not full time, just part time – for 25 years, maybe. And I really liked it.
“But then I got fired two years ago, because of the budget overdraft at the academy of music. They had to fire 14 people. So I was among them. Since then all this happened with the trilogy.”
Haugerud would be far too unsentimental to say that everything occurs for a reason, but the timing was certainly convenient. He began making short films at the turn of the century and moved into features with I Belong, in 2012, and Barn, in 2019. Reviews have always been strong, but major festival interest in the trilogy elevated his profile immeasurably. Sex premiered to acclaim at Berlin in early 2024. Love won raves at Venice later the same year. Dreams (Sex Love) then bossed the 2025 Berlinale.
The stories are loosely linked by one character who is largely in the background for two episodes. The films’ titles lay out the connecting themes: all key characters are uncertain in their relationships.
Calling the trilogy Oslo Stories was the distributor’s idea, he says, but it does make a great deal of sense. There is, alas, no avoiding the cliche about the city being a character in itself. We get a sense of the changing demographics. Love, in particular, with its many ferry journeys across the Oslofjord, revels in the delightfully crisp architecture.
This looks like a very agreeable place to live. I wonder if he was aware he was recommending the city to the world. The tourist board can have no complaints.
“That’s kind of a dilemma,” he says. “When you are pointing a camera at something – when you’re putting something in focus – it tends to become more beautiful. Almost always.
“I don’t think you are really showing the truth when you are pointing a camera towards something. You are taking away everything that’s on the sides, and you’re just focusing on one thing.”
I think it’s a trilogy because I say it is
Love takes in a few conversations on municipal politics. We’re really getting at the superstructure of the city there.
“While Sex and Dreams are reflecting on how the city has developed,” Love “is going back to the old Oslo and showing a look at how the city has been and how the city has been built on social-democratic values.”
One might reasonably ask what makes it a trilogy. The three films stand confidently on their own.
“I think it’s a trilogy because I say it is,” he says, laughing. “Also because I wanted to explore themes about love, about sexual identity. And I think you can dig into those themes in very different ways. I find that these things are very individual.
“People have very individual feelings about sexuality, for instance – about how big a part sexuality plays in your life. Do you not have as much sexuality as you’d like to? Or you can imagine that you have too much sexuality. If you want to explore those themes I think you have to tell more stories.”
Haugerud is not afraid to inhabit lives very different from his own. Dreams, the film that won him one of the big three European-festival awards, has him telling a story from the perspective of a teenage girl. In the modern age there is a lot of hand-wringing about appropriation. If some new puritans had their way, middle-aged blokes would write stories only about middle-aged blokes. Yet Johanne – played by Ella Overbye in Dreams – is perfectly drawn. She is intelligent and articulate but still convincingly uncertain how the adult world works.
“I didn’t really have so many options,” he says, realistically. “I wanted to work with this actor, Ella Overbye. I wanted to write something for her. I could probably have made a story that wasn’t based on voiceover – that had more distance.
“But I think if I had made a more distant film, a more objective film, it would be about a 60-year-old director looking at a teenage girl. That would have been awkward and troublesome. The only way I could do it was to remember my own teenage years and when I first fell in love.”
It feels as if Johanne’s dilemma is one that most writers run into during their careers. Is it right to use other people’s lives as the basis in the work? Johanne’s version of her ambiguous relationship with a teacher looks to be treading the bounds between reportage and creative reimagining.
Graham Greene wrote that all writers should have a splinter of ice in their hearts. He meant they should have the capacity to shut down any such moral pettifoggery and reprocess observed human experience into fiction or drama or poetry.
“I think you need to keep your distance in a way,” says Haugerud. That’s the only way it is possible to tell something interesting. But you also have to dig deep.”
So was the splinter of ice a factor in the creation of the trilogy?
“I could say that all the characters in the three films are about me,” he says. “I use my own experiences. To make films, for me, is a way of both daydreaming and to fantasise.
“It’s also very much about trying to reflect on society and reflecting on how things are. It’s a way of thinking. Whether you are telling about your own life or making something up, it’s the same thing.”
At any rate the stories seem to have connected with the world outside Scandinavia. Can he explain why this has happened to him now?
“I think it’s always a bit of luck if you get a good reaction from the audience and from critics and from distributors,” he says. “It depends a lot of what else is in the competition.”
One is tempted to suggest that he can now leave behind all his part-timing in the stacks for a life on the glamorous festival circuit. But that is not how Haugerud sees things.
“I don’t really have time to work at the library right now,” he says, modestly. “But I will certainly try to find work again, if it’s possible. Because I really, really enjoy it.”
Oslo Stories: Dreams (Sex Love) is in cinemas. Oslo Stories: Love is in cinemas from Friday, August 15th. Oslo Stories: Sex is in cinemas from Friday, August 22nd
