Starring Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jörgen Thorsson, Ann Petrén and Sten Ljunggren. Written by Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf and John Ajvide Lindqvist. Directed by Ali Abbasi. Produced by Nina Bisgaard, Piodor Gustafsson and Petra Jönsson.
Meta Film Stockholm/Black Spark Film & TV/Sveriges Television/Kärnfilm/Film i Väst

This indie-style drama, an adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s short story GRÄNS (he is the author of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN), is about Tina – a troll who thinks she’s a human, living her unexceptional life in modern society, experiencing moments of happiness, excelling in her job as a border control officer (thanks to her troll senses) and, ultimately, finding herself feeling contempt for both what some humans are capable of doing and what awful acts trolls are also willing to perpetrate.

This Swedish release, which manages to romanticise the unromantic, sees Tina reevaluating her place in the world after meeting another of her kind. After frolicking in the lake with her new love, Vore (Eero Milonof), and taking part in some startling troll sex, Tina’s joy at finally meeting a soul mate is erased when she discovers what he is doing to get back at humans for their secret and terrible treatment of trolls back in the 1970s…

BORDER is a strikingly original and nicely understated melding of folklore, believable drama, romance, body horror moments, and crime plotting, incorporating troll-related details including their ability to smell shame and other feelings in humans, their affinity with wild animals, their love of eating bugs, and their susceptibility to being pursued by lightning during storms. The folkloric concept of the changeling is used as a key, very dark plot point. 

Eva Melander’s performance as Tina is mesmerisingly low key and credible, conveying her submerged feelings clearly, even through the layers of prosthetics she wears to give her a Neanderthal-esque troll appearance.

BORDER is a small, perfectly formed movie that sticks in the memory.