Loreen’s Euphoria is manifesting through the gym speakers. The contents of the T method diet sit on the plate. Weigh-ins and measurements. Group classes. Lea has said goodbye to her mother to spend the summer at a health camp. Surrounded by peers struggling with eating disorders, she grows especially fond of her roommate, the spontaneous Sasha. Lea quietly admires her new confidante’s openness, a quality she has never possessed herself, yet her mind lingers on Rune, the camp instructor. Amid her insecurities, her search for authority and her longing for validation, the teenager will discover more than she bargained for.

Behind the sun-soaked “Retrogram” filter lurks real life: the emotional terror of one’s own body and the universal need to feel accepted. The Danish director Talund’s first feature breaks away from conventional coming-of-age formulas – with microscopic precision it dissects youth psychology, fears and social contracts, earning it the comparison: the Scandinavian answer to Lady Bird (2017). Selected for the San Sebastián and Göteborg festivals, the film “suffers”, in the best sense, from the burdens of wisdom and the aches of acceptance — only to let them dissolve into lightness, a kind of blissful weightlessness. We wish Lea, played by Marie Helweg Augustsen, nothing but a happy future; so much so that we feel the urge to support her. How do we see ourselves: through the eyes and acknowledgements of others? How hard is it to be yourself in an age riddled with the double standards of virtue signalling?