Koko-di Koko-da 2019

Directed by Johannes Nyholm

Visually arresting and very adult, Swedish director Johannes Nyholm’s devilishly devised folktale focuses on a grieving couple’s infinite camping trip from hell.

Denmark / Sweden In Danish and Swedish with English subtitles
86 minutes DCP
R13
Violence & content that may disturb

Director/Producer/Screenplay

Editor

Johannes Nyholm

Photography

Johan Lundborg
,
Tobias Höiem-Flyckt

Production designer

Pia Aleborg

Costume designer

Gabriella Lundberg

Music

Simon Ohlsson
,
Olaf Cornéer

With

Leif Edlund
,
Ylva Gallon
,
Katarina Jacobson
,
Peter Belli

Festivals

Sundance
,
Rotterdam 2019

Elsewhere

Full of indelible imagery and haunting déjà vu, this pitch-black fable depicting grief as a psychological nightmare follows a bereaved couple, three years after suffering an unimaginable loss. Attempting to repair their strained marriage on a camping trip, Elin (Ylva Gallon) and Tobias (Leif Edlund) instead find themselves at the mercy of a trio of dark fairytale characters: a menacing goliath; a sinister woman with a vicious dog on a leash; and the ringleader, a homicidal dandy resplendent in a bowler hat. As Elin and Tobias are tormented over and over again in a forest they can’t escape from, director Johannes Nyholm slyly introduces moments of animation and puppetry – including hypnotic cutaways of paper-marionette rabbits – that strikingly parallel the couple’s life. Their ordeal is emotionally wrenching but also strangely poetic, and only by healing their relationship can they exorcise their trauma – and the demons baying for blood. Koko-di Koko-da is humorous and nihilistic, beguiling and repulsive in equal measure – and just like the titular nursery rhyme heard on loop throughout the film, never forgotten. — AT