Lingering Light

When I first imagined Lingering Light, I wanted to capture a world suspended between day and night, a place where time feels frozen and people survive by clinging to fragile promises. The idea of a Copenhagen trapped in eternal twilight became the perfect backdrop for a story about obedience, fear, and the courage it takes to question both. At its heart, this film is about choice. Freja’s journey mirrors the internal struggle so many of us face when the path forward is uncertain. Do we trust authority and follow the crowd, even when doubt gnaws at us? Or do we risk standing alone, knowing it may cost us everything? These questions guided every frame, every silence, and every shadow in the film. I was also drawn to the idea of truth existing in the margins: in what is left unsaid, in what is missing, and in what cannot be proven but must be felt. The image of a ferry returning empty, with belongings swept away and windows tarped over, spoke to me as a metaphor for systems that promise salvation but deliver erasure. Freja’s refusal to look away from this truth, even as her family denies it, is the emotional spine of the story. Visually, I wanted the film to live in the tension between beauty and decay. Copenhagen in endless twilight is both haunting and luminous, with golden light bleeding into deep blue skies. This duality reflects the characters themselves, each caught between longing and resignation, hope and despair. The aesthetic was designed to feel painterly and intimate, evoking both the romanticism of memory and the claustrophobia of survival. On a personal level, Lingering Light is deeply inspired by my fascination with how families confront crisis. Within the walls of a kitchen or at the edge of a dock, the intimate becomes epic. Henrik’s need for control, Liv’s longing for unity, and Einar’s pursuit of forbidden love all crash against Freja’s determination to resist. Their conflicts are not only about survival in a dystopian city, but about what survival means and what we are willing to sacrifice for it. The ending of the film leaves Freja’s decision unresolved. She stands at the threshold of the ferry, bathed in twilight, torn between following her family into the unknown or remaining behind in resistance. This ambiguity is intentional. I wanted the audience to inhabit her silence and feel the weight of a choice that cannot be answered for her. In that moment, the film becomes less about what Freja does and more about what we, as viewers, believe we would do. I hope audiences leave the film unsettled but also reflective. More than anything, I hope they carry with them the image of Freja luminous in twilight, poised between obedience and defiance, her future unwritten.