Keep yours peeled for Egghead Republic at Trieste Science+Fiction Festival

If you thought you knew what a Nordic film looked like, prepare for a jarring, brilliant awakening. Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, the acclaimed Swedish directing duo behind the existential space voyage Aniara, have returned with their second feature, and we are incredibly excited to share that this might be one of the most leftfield crazy Nordic-directed films we have seen in quite a while—which is saying something.

Egghead Republic is an English-language film that is fresh, bizarre, and pulsating with a fantastic, early 2000s-inspired soundtrack. Its official genre could be described as dystopian sci-fi satire mixed with a healthy dose of gonzo journalism excess.

The Story: Centaurs, Cold War, and Cringey Media

The film unfolds in an alternate 2004 where the Cold War never truly ended, and a nuclear bomb fell on Soviet Kazakhstan. It loosely adapts the 1957 post-nuclear novel The Egghead Republic by German writer Arno Schmidt, but filters the dystopian setting through Lilja’s personal experience working for a certain infamous counterculture media company at its peak.

A group of reporters from a VICE-like publication are convinced by their sleazy boss to go searching for a mythical centaur rumoured to be roaming a radioactive wasteland. This leads them on a strange adventure that gets stranger and stranger as it progresses, plunging into surreal delirium.

• Ella Rae Rappaport is hard to take your eyes off in her role as the intern Sonja Schmidt, an aspiring illustrator who is tragically gullible and desperate for her ‘big break.’
• Meanwhile, Tyler Labine leads as a very unlikeable and sleazy lead journo, Dino Davis, the kind of boss who uses the “economy of exposure” to exploit his young staff.

Screening at Trieste Science+Fiction Festival

We are thrilled that Egghead Republic is having its Italian premiere on Thursday, October 30th, at the prestigious Trieste Science+Fiction Festival in Italy. Kågerman and Lilja are no strangers to the festival, having won the Asteroide Award back in 2019 for Aniara. This time, they bring a wilder, more anarchic vision that blends freaky science fiction with a ruthless satire on media-industrial complexes and the exploitation inherent in “exposure culture.”

In short: be prepared for a film that is hilarious and gruesome, incisive and idiotic, and ultimately unforgettable.

We will be keeping a very close eye on this film and hope it comes over to the UK soon.