Description
Norma Dorma is a surreal Swiss mystery-melodrama and existential thriller from writer-director Lorenz Suter, exploring motherhood, grief and the increasingly unstable boundary between waking life and dreams. Norma (Marina Guerrini) is struggling to raise her young son Lenny after the unexplained disappearance of her partner Henri (Jeroen Engelsman). Time seems strangely fluid, everyday responsibilities become harder to manage, and Henri continues to appear to her at night. Although Norma recognizes these encounters as dreams, they begin to feel increasingly tangible--until she awakens one morning inexplicably pregnant.
At the publishing house where Norma works, she encounters Mikka (Jeanne Werner), a sleep researcher studying people whose unusual dream states seem to blur conventional distinctions between sleeping and waking. More importantly, Mikka has a connection to Henri's past and may understand what happened before his disappearance. As Norma follows her into an alternate realm where ordinary limitations appear to dissolve, she discovers an enticing vision of the family life she has lost. Yet the deeper she retreats into this apparent refuge, the less certain she becomes about which experiences belong to reality and which are manifestations of longing, trauma or something stranger.
Suter uses Norma's shifting perceptions to examine the pressures of parenthood and the temptation to escape an imperfect everyday life for an idealized alternative. The film deliberately leaves portions of its mystery unresolved, asking whether Norma's experiences arise from grief and exhaustion or represent something beyond conventional reality. Its dream logic is reinforced visually through saturated colors and surreal transformations of recognizable Swiss locations, while the concept also draws upon the phenomenon of paradoxical insomnia--the subjective experience of feeling awake despite measurable periods of sleep. Marina Guerrini's central performance anchors these increasingly unstable worlds as Norma confronts questions of family, responsibility, freedom and acceptance.
Norma Dorma was developed by Suter and his collaborators through an unusually fluid creative process spanning several years, with writing, filming and editing evolving alongside the filmmakers' experiences of becoming parents; Guerrini appears alongside her own children. The film premiered in the Panorama program at the 2025 Solothurn Film Festival and subsequently screened at festivals including Sci-Fi-London, the Lighthouse International Film Festival and the International Filmfest Emden-Norderney. It received Best Feature Film honors at the Ariano International Film Festival and Lytham International Film Festival, while Cineuropa described it as a surreal melodrama in which reality and fiction collide around questions of parenthood and the desire to escape into reassuring parallel worlds.
Cast & Crew
Actors:
- Marina Guerrini
- Jeanne Werner
- Jeroen Engelsman
- Jeanne Devos
- Joachim Aeschlimann
Director: Lorenz Suter
Producer: Simon Weber
Producer: Stephan Heiniger
Additional Details
Label: Dreamscape Media
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Run Time: 86 mins
Region: 0
Release Date: 09/08/26
UPC: 810157468284