If there is one film winning most obscure title this year it surely has to be Erika Wasserman’s debut feature; The Year I Started Masturbating. A fantastic, heartfelt comedy about modern women, marriage and motherhood, and features a particularly brilliant performance from its lead star, Katia Winter.

Alex spoke with the director back when the film had its premiere and the Nordic Watchlist team are delighted to share that the film will be getting a worldwide release on Netflix on the 26th May!

Nordic Watchlist: You recently came back from the Norwegian International Film Festival where you got to screen the film and promote it. How was that experience for you having previously been a producer and now sharing your debut feature?

Erika Wasserman: As a director, getting to experience it with an audience and hearing the audience respond to it has to be the biggest reward of making a film.

I was really excited about seeing what would happen when I screened it for a Norwegian audience and it was super fun. I mean, there was so much laughter and the questions from the audience afterwards was just amazing.

There was one woman who said that there were too many divorces and that she thought the solution is that we have to have more sex and more laughter for a long lasting relationship or marriage.

And for me, it’s like, wow, this is exactly what I was hoping for! Laughter and then thinking about relationships and what kind of challenges there are to be able to try to make it work with another person.

If that person is of another sex, then oh my God, there’s like all these power dynamics and these expectations on the roles that you’re supposed to play as a woman, a mother and partner – it’s not easy.

NW: You directed, produced and co-wrote the film – what was the process you went through?

EW: So I started out developing it and got a scriptwriter on board, Christin Magdu, who wrote the script with me. And one of the actors who was in the film before we started it, wanted to make a comedy.

I had the story, vision, and characters I wanted to see, and I produced it using my own company. So after a year I brought on a producer and then I had the Film Institute on board already, and we then got the distributor ScanBox distributed theatrically in Scandinavia.

NW: What about the inspiration for your story? Is it based on social observation of things that you’ve experienced?

EW: The main character is one who people can relate to, the challenge of trying to be all of these roles as a woman all at once – there’s a lot of humour in that.

When I was being brought up it was in a time where the roles of men and women are changing and we don’t really have any role models for how to live in an equal relationship or marriage.

We kind of think we do and we try, but it’s still all just different expectations. As a mother coming to a daycare meeting, you get points as a man just showing up and as a woman, you’re like feeling shit If you don’t bring your own home baked goods.

When I was being brought up it was in a time where the roles of men and women are changing and we don’t really have any role models for how to live in an equal relationship or marriage.

At least for me, that’s how it is. But not every woman is like that that, not all people care about that stuff, and you shouldn’t. But I think it’s in the back of your head. You want to be perfect but it’s hard.

NW: You have an amazing cast in this – firstly, Katia Winter is just brilliant but I wanted to mention Vera Carlbom too, how did you discover her?

EW: Well, I had an amazing casting director, Lovisa Bergenstråhle, and she made the job of casting so easy because she would present three different suggestions and I would just go for one of the three.

And Vera was one of the three, and she was amazing. We did a test with her because she had not acted before and I then tested her with Katia. They just had great chemistry and she was so awesome. We had so much fun, they are both brilliant people to work with.

NW: Katia is fantastic, it’s like she was made for the role in a way. How happy were you with her performance and was she someone that you had in mind as well when writing it?

EW: No; I brought her in when I had the first draft of the script to test for it, and she was just great so I immediately decided to go with her and what was amazing was that she had not been acting so much in Swedish, shes been mainly in Hollywood and filmed series like Dexter and Sleepy Hollow and a Terrence Malick film!

The Year I Started Masturbating is out now on Netflix

Interview by Alex Minnis