My discussion with Swedish-native Malin Barr at Sundance quickly evolved beyond a standard interview. By the time we secured coffee amidst the festival’s intensity, the conversation felt like a continuation of an already established, deeply considered thought. Rather than a conventional, seated Q&A, this piece is a dynamic, walking dialogue. We moved through Park City’s side streets and festival crowds, weaving together incomplete observations.
This sense of constant, active movement is perfectly suited for discussing Barr’s Sundance debut short film, “Sauna Sickness.” The film itself occupies a similar emotional space: a work of cinema that is concurrently intimate, subtly disorienting, and profoundly devastating, existing in the complex, emotional “in-betweens.”
The film’s setup is simple: Cleo (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) agrees to her boyfriend Tobias’s plan for a romantic New Year’s Eve at her mother’s remote mountain cabin. However, when they are accidentally locked out of the main house following a moment of intimacy in the sauna, Tobias immediately turns on Cleo, plunging their night into a minefield of emotional conflict.
The film’s exploration of subtle emotional manipulation within a relationship has elicited an immediate and deeply personal response from audiences. “Sauna Sickness” illuminates those corrosive, often-dismissed behaviors—the stonewalling, the gaslighting, the normalizing of discomfort—that frequently go unnamed, especially when experienced by women.
When I asked Barr about the genesis of the project, she traced it back, not to a script idea, but to a moment of delayed recognition in her own life.
“It was partly inspired by an experience I had in a relationship,” Barr explains. “At the time, I genuinely thought it was just a funny anecdote. Years later, looking back with clarity, I realized it wasn’t funny at all—it was actually very manipulative.”
What became the core of the film wasn’t merely the behavior itself, but the insidious internal confusion it manufactured.
“I became fascinated by that feeling of not knowing what was real anymore. I felt confused in my own narrative—like I couldn’t trust my instincts, my memory, or my perception,” she says. “At first, I thought, ‘This is just me; I must be too sensitive or dramatic.’ But after I started talking about it, I realized how universal that feeling of self-doubt is among women who have experienced this kind of emotional dynamic.” The film became an attempt to externalize this private disorientation.
The Sauna: An Emotional and Cultural Architecture
The choice of setting for “Sauna Sickness” is far from incidental; the traditional Swedish sauna functions as a powerful emotional engine for the narrative. It is hot, oppressively claustrophobic, and fundamentally inescapable—a perfect mirror for the protagonist’s escalating internal distress.
“The hot and cold. The inside and outside. The emotional roller coaster of that kind of relationship, where you are constantly being pulled to extremes,” Barr explains. “I wanted that duality reflected not just in the story beats, but visually and experientially for the viewer.”
Inside the humid confinement, the protagonist is shown sweating, confined, and vulnerable. Outside, she’s freezing, underdressed, and exposed to the elements. “I wanted to make it as hard as possible for her,” Barr says with a focused intensity. “Physically and emotionally, the environment had to reinforce her predicament.”
The setting also fulfilled Barr’s creative imperative to return to her roots. Moving between Los Angeles and Sweden, she felt drawn to make a film deeply embedded in a place and culture that resonated instinctively and rawly with her Swedish heritage. The winter landscape and its rituals offered a visceral, unromanticized backdrop.
Casting a Deliberate Vulnerability
The emotional scaffolding of the film relies heavily on its performances, anchored by lead actress Thea Sofie Loch Næss. Her presence grounds the film in a mesmerizing, volatile blend of strength and frailty.
“She’s such a natural actress—absolutely incredible to watch and work with,” Barr praises.
Barr’s choice to cast the Norwegian actress opposite a cast of Swedish actors was a precise, deliberate decision to enhance the protagonist’s sense of isolation. “It added another subtle, yet palpable, layer of alienation. She’s already in this incredibly vulnerable position within the relationship, and now she is also slightly outside the main group culturally and linguistically.”
The supporting cast is distinguished, featuring Magnus and Sanna Krepper, a real-life couple and two very respected veteran actors in Sweden. “I reached out thinking, they’re so established, maybe they’ll say no—it was a long shot. But incredibly, everyone I wanted said yes. That almost never happens on a micro-budget project.”
Developing a Visual Language of Restraint
Cinematographer Malin Gutke was one of the first key collaborators Barr brought onto the project. Their immediate creative synergy was foundational.
“Sometimes people just aren’t on the same wavelength creatively. But with Malin, she immediately got the feeling, the temperature, the aesthetic restraint I was going for,” Barr recalls.
Together, they developed a visual language defined by a potent mix of restraint and controlled escalation. This included the use of long, nearly imperceptible, “breathing” zooms that subtly build pressure and paranoia, contrasted with faster, more jarring, and disorienting moments that mirror the protagonist’s loss of emotional footing.
“That extremely slow zoom makes it feel like something unseen is closing in on you, tightening the space around her. And then when the visual control breaks, it directly mirrors her unraveling internal state and confusion,” Barr explains.
Making the Film Without a Safety Net
he making of Sauna Sickness became a testament to creative conviction.
“We faced obstacle after obstacle—logistical challenges, extreme weather. But we knew we needed snow; it was essential to the visual story. We simply didn’t want to wait another year,” Barr recounts.
Their solution was radical: a “shoot first, figure out post-production later” approach. “We said, ‘Let’s get the hard part done. Once we have the material, we’ll find a way to finish it.’”
The editing process was necessarily swift, but deeply collaborative. “I worked with my first-choice editor, Linda Jildmalm—she’s absolutely incredible. We only had about a month together, which is nothing in feature or short film terms, but I’d prepped the material extensively to make the most of that time.”
Sound and music became crucial, non-verbal storytelling tools. The score, developed by Barr and her composer, Karl Frid, incorporates unconventional instruments—and even Barr’s own voice.
“I’m actually singing in the choir parts, adding texture to the soundscape,” she says, laughing at the memory of recording herself. “We decided to experiment and try anything that felt right for the tone.” The resulting audio landscape—spanning old Swedish folk instruments and experimental, disquieting textures—reinforces the film’s pervasive unease. “You don’t always know where the unsettling sounds are coming from,” Barr adds, “and that ambiguity is intentional.”
Audience Recognition and the Power of Naming
Since its Sundance premiere, the film has served as a catalyst for intensely emotional conversations, particularly among women.
“So many women have come up to me after screenings saying, ‘This exact thing happened to me,’ or ‘I didn’t have the words for this specific feeling until I watched your film,’” Barr shares, acknowledging the power of representation.
Barr is unequivocal about the film’s core purpose. “I didn’t need people to fully understand every nuance of the narrative. I just wanted them to recognize something—to feel that essential, confusing sense that something was fundamentally off.”
The film’s strength lies in its willingness to dwell in these ambiguous, gray areas of relational harm, where the damage is subtle, incremental, and easily dismissed by external observers.
“If you can’t name what is happening to you, the default is to assume it must be your fault. Emotional manipulation—the stonewalling, the gaslighting, the strategic ignoring—has become so tragically normalized in our society,” Barr asserts.
She adds a sharp observation about social conditioning: “So many women are culturally conditioned to take care of others, to minimize their own discomfort, and to make the people around them feel comfortable—even when they are the ones being hurt.”
An Ending That Holds Space
Crucially, “Sauna Sickness” manages to avoid the trap of leaving the audience feeling raw and abandoned. Unlike films that expose trauma without offering resolution, Barr’s short ends with restraint, offering a grounded moment instead of despair.
“I didn’t want it to feel triggering without giving something back to the person who has experienced this. I wanted the ending to feel honest about the experience, but also grounded, like a moment of true, clear-eyed realization.”
Looking Ahead: The Feature Evolution
What began as a contained short film is already evolving into something larger.
“When we were shooting, people kept telling me, ‘This needs to be a feature.’ At first, I wasn’t sure that was the right path. But after seeing the audience response and understanding why they felt it needed more space, I understood,” Barr admits.
Barr has since written a feature-length version of the story, expanding the scope of the emotional terrain, and is beginning conversations about its production future. “Now I know exactly what I want it to be. The short was the beginning, the proof of concept for the atmosphere and the feeling.”
As “Sauna Sickness” continues its impressive festival run—from Sundance to Gothenburg and onto Santa Barbara—Barr emphasizes the importance of community and connection.
“If people want to reach out because they relate to the film, I want to be available to them. Community matters more than accolades.”
Ultimately, she hopes the film invites crucial reflection across all audiences, regardless of gender. “The goal is not accusation—but questioning. What toxic behaviors have we, as a society, simply normalized and absorbed into our relationships without scrutiny?”
As the walking interview finally settles into stillness, hot coffee finally in hand, one certainty remains: “Sauna Sickness” has already sparked the essential, difficult conversation it was created to start.
About Malin Barr
Malin Barr is a Swedish director and actor based in Los Angeles. She is an esteemed alum of the Alma Löv Screenwriting Academy and the prestigious Cine Qua Non Lab, organizations dedicated to the development of unique cinematic voices. Barr consistently crafts women-driven stories that powerfully blend dark humor with genre elements. Her previous films, “Evergreen” and “Red Flag”, have screened and earned acclaim internationally. “Sauna Sickness” marks her highly anticipated Sundance Film Festival debut.
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