Heartbeast

Story

All or nothing: a Finnish coming-of-age queer love story full of escalating power games, hammering beats and feelings too powerful to control. Elina, an upcoming 17-year old rapper, has to move from Finland to Southern France because her mother has remarried. Here, she meets her stepsister Sofia, a charismatic ballet dancer with a double life of drug-fuelled parties, and falls in love with her. Elina’s love rapidly becomes an obsession, however, and when the pair run away to Hamburg, they goad each other into toxic mind-games of closeness and rejection, pressure and humiliation.

Director

AINO SUNI (*1985 in Finland) studied screenplay writing at the University of Salford in England. After her documentary Never Again (2018) about Gangsta rapper Mercedes Bentso, Heartbeast is her debut feature.

Trailer