It was 2021’s International Film Festival Rotterdam that made it possible for us to talk to the director of a movie we loved so much, Gritt (2021). Itonje Søimer Guttormsen was the name, and we had a lovely conversation on zoom about Gritt, freedom, Lilith’s choice of leaving the Eden, constructive, freeing rituals and some witchcraft. That interview is here. We were accredited press members but were unable to attend the festival in person because of the pandemic. Five years later, Ms. Guttormsen’s new movie “Butterfly” (2026) is again on IFFR’s program and happily, this time Burcu Meltem Tohum was there in person, representing Dial M for Movie. We are so happy to get the chance to interview Itonje Søimer Guttormsen for a second time, she has kindly answered all our questions about the festival atmosphere, her new movie Butterfly, the casting of Renate Reinsve, shooting locations, filmmaking and much more. The Turkish translation of the interview will be published in a couple of days, we are so thankful to Ms. Guttormsen to have accepted to answer our questions, it was such a pleasure, an unforgettable experience to talk to her about cinema, life and everything. But most importantly, add Butterfly to your watching list, it will probably come to a festival near you. Butterfly is a spiritual, philosophical and at the same time, an equally (if not more) down-to-earth journey that will make you say, “thank goodness I’ve taken it”.
Last time we have exchanged a few mails about my review on Gritt, you have shared a photo you took, showing a large mountain area, saying “blessings from a retreat in the mountains” (February 2021). So, can we assume that some of the inspiration for Butterfly came from the same mountains?
Well, this movie started as a project in 2008, so it goes 18 years back. It was my first feature film idea during my last year of film school and I worked on it maybe half a year, before I started working on Gritt, because I realized it [Butterfly] was not a debut film, it became clear that it was too big in terms of production and locations, etc. It felt too large and far off, so I started working with Gritt, which was in 2009 and it took 11 years before that was completed. But I did work with Butterfly in between, for example in 2012 I did a year with script development and went to Gran Canaria, but then again, I left it. But I spent quite a lot of time in the Canarian Islands so it can very well be a photo from the islands that I’ve sent you, up in the mountains around 2021, yes.
In the opening scenes, right in the beginning we see a 7-part circle representing the 7 stages of the transformation of the cocoon. Is it a reference to the stages of Lilithstene? Also, I’ve found out that there are also 7 main Canarian Islands, did you think about that too?
Yes, you’re right, there are seven islands. I just took it off [showing her wrist] but normally I’ve been wearing this red band with seven knobs forever, since I was shooting. You can buy them everywhere in the Canarian Islands and they reflect the islands of course, but also the chakras, so you have this as well. And with Lilith, and the steps in Lilithism that you have been writing about before, [our Gritt review] there are actually more steps, 11 is the number of Lilith, but again, it’s among magic numbers, 7 and 11. Also, the number 7 gives associations to fairy tales which I wanted this movie to be of a modern fairy tale or a modern tale. The choice of the seven steps is also because of the mother Vera (Lillian Müller); she has seven steps in her retreat that she wants to complete and then in the film there are also 7 chapters. And indeed, the colors of the circle in the beginning, the colors of the different stages of the transformation from larva to butterfly, resemble the chapters of the film as well. So, it’s all kind of drawing in the symbolism of transformation and intertwining, making some kind of fictional frame. Also, this circle is very much inspired by Hildegaard af Bingen, which is one of my favorite role models, the nun, or as she’s called, an “abbatissa” [Latin for a founder of a monastery]. So, she’s a monastery creator and botanic, musician and composer, she’s a polymath from the 12th century, so it’s also a bit about these medieval cosmology symbols of hers.
We can say that there are two worlds in the movie, the world of humans and the spiritual world. The transition between these two is always apparent but never aggressive, I mean the movie never insists on one or another, I loved that as a spectator. A good example is maybe when Numan Acar’s character Chato says “I have some bitcoin somewhere”. Can we say that while writing the script, you paid attention not to scare away, so to speak, the spectators by saying “this is the only truth”, etc?
Thank you, I’m happy for your question and also for the way you frame it. Of course I don’t have any answers, I’m just a filmmaker, I just tried to raise some questions and put something out there. My experience of being in Gran Canaria has a say in this also, because I was there for three years back and forth doing research before we shot, and I connected with all these people that are in the film. For me it was a sensation, or rather a discovery of more openness towards spirituality than, at least what we find in Norway. It was like, obvious that everyone had some kind of spirituality more than “if they had it”, in other words, “what type of spirituality do you have” was more the question, I guess, in Gran Canaria. So, I found it very opening and healing to be there, there was so much hope, possibility and will to make a better world, to try to make some concrete changes. I met all these people who made their own small life with great consciousness towards which footprint they put out in the world and towards the refugee crisis and all of that, and of course they live very close to the resources, they have little water, they have a lot of fires, so their life conditions are more fragile than in Norway at least still or at least yet (laughs). So, I found this humility towards nature and our fragile life condition very beautiful.
And with that came also the spirituality and I felt that it was plausible for these two very wounded, very detached sisters to experience some kind of healing through that thin veil that I’ve found there. I didn’t plan for it, well, I guess I planned for it a bit because already in 2008, I had the idea of the mother making this spiritual kind of retreat center so it was already there but I felt that these two sisters would heal through that journey that the mother took accidentally; or in a way, it came as I’ve found these people. And of course, they too live with reality and bitcoins and iPhones and of course there’s no conclusion, it’s not like, if you found your spirituality and your spot in the mountains then you’re good, you’re okay. No, I mean life is always losing and finding, losing and destroying and building, etc. So, I wanted to tap into that but also, I think there is still humor there, so that it doesn’t become like a manifesto from my part, I hope. But this really divides the critics because already there are some critics who have rejected the film from the middle and out because it’s too much for them with the softness and the spirituality.
For me, I think it was very well balanced, the presentation of the two worlds, I didn’t feel like there was too much spirituality at all, frankly.
Good, that’s good, then you’re my ideal audience (laughs). But that’s what I aim to do, and I think more than spirituality, it’s about contact, compassion and sharing. It’s about people, that we need each other. So, that’s sort of the framing, that might be spiritual but it’s not the spirituality that saves them, at the end.
Exactly, yes. I was also very touched by the transformation of Diana, the other sister played by Helene Bjørneby, since I’m also a teacher, I found myself emotionally attached to her professional choices.
Great. Working with two main characters it’s kind of a challenge but actually it’s more of a gift. I see the audience is either identifying with Lily or with Diana, that’s cool to experience, and when I see the film, it’s like every second time I identify with either Lily or Diana.
Oh yes, I was keeping track of the names too, assuming that each of them is specifically chosen. Lily, Diane and the name of the horse, Delilah, so I was keeping track of all the goddesses along the way!
Yeah, the names, good catch, you’re very observant!
Thank you! And may I ask about the casting process? I’m going to ask you about Renate Reinsve but I learned that Numan Acar has a lot of great parts under his sleeve in popular movies and TV series like Spider-Man: Far from Home, Homeland or Jack Ryan, I was surprised, to say the least. Helene Bjørneby is also great, and I was very happy to see Birgitte Larsen from Gritt. So, how did the casting process unfold? Was Renate Reinsve always someone you had in mind for the role, or did you write the character with her in mind?
No, Renate wasn’t on my mind at all. I was always really struggling with who could play that role since 2008. For me, the films are so rooted in the characters, so I prefer having an actor in mind, like with Gritt (2021), I wrote it for Birgitte [Larsen] and I casted everyone for who they were. But here, I had to do a proper, normal casting (laughs) which I found very challenging and I was so puzzled. I think I tried 55 women, great women actors and models, to find this kind of strange girl with this horse-like attitude and she’s also a bit of a teenager like a 14-year-old and she’s so complex and she’s so damaged and so layered with wounds, but then at the bottom of that, there’s a very bright and shiny girl that stopped shining and then started to abuse herself.
So, no, it was super difficult and my producer, Maria Ekerhovd, she very early on suggested Renate, but I had just seen The Worst Person in the World (2021) and I was like “no, she’s too famous she’s too sweet, she’s too charming”, I didn’t see her like that [like Butterfly’s Lily]. But I had seen her in an avant-garde theatre play in 2019 where she was like really cool and she had such a great sense of humor, so I began thinking there is something in her that is brave and want to do different things, and then she read the script and she really connected. Then we talked and we connected and then still, I did take her through three rounds of auditions because I was so insecure and I was thinking that I don’t want to use “the actor of Joachim Trier” or someone that famous. I thought it might be very distracting but, in the end, she was the best for that role. I think at the beginning, what kept me from choosing her was the dilemma of what would people think. I could be criticized for giving a role to a person “who gets all the roles” for example but in the end, I chose her and I’m very happy about that.
It was also when I put her together with Helene [Bjørneby], she did my graduation film from film school in 2008, she did the lead character there and she was amazing. She’s always amazing but I’m using past tense because she was kind of like on the side of everything, she lives on the countryside and she’s not this kind of career person, so she’s genuinely a great actor but not the aggressive type. So then, when I met her again after all these years, she hadn’t done much film, she’s been teaching theater and she has an appearance in The Worst Person in the World and I thought, “Oh no, now I’m putting two people from the same movie in my production!” (laughs). But then, when I put those two together, they were amazing and they really liked each other, they had this crazy dynamic and it really helped that Renate was that famous, because Lily [Renate’s character], she feels famous and Diana feels that Lily is famous although she’s maybe not so famous, so all of this brought a real authenticity to the dynamic. Every time we met, Renate would come from some kind of gala with Louis Vuitton dresses, and Helene would come from her teaching job, so that gave something, I think, a realism that I really like. With Gritt also, I used a lot of real people, I like to go close to reality, in my movies.
Yes, and in the movie, not our first encounter with Lily maybe but when we saw closely Renate Reinsve’s character walking on the street, all of a sudden I thought about Gritt because the shot was from the same angle, the character has the same allure, I was surprised, forgive me if I’m wrong.
Oh, you’re so right! It was crazy, we shot that after the whole film, that was the last thing we shot, the Hamburg and Askim scenes. And when I looked through the lens, because the costumes also came on the spot there, I was like “Oh my God, this is Gritt! I didn’t see it before, this is the same character, what the fuck?” (laughs). But then of course she changes and there are many differences, Gritt is an idealist and a passionate revolutionary in her mind, while Lily is a fashion provocateur, party animal, so they’re obviously very different.
Talking about fashion, it’s also possible to observe the emotional transitions symbolized by the characters through their costumes. From this perspective, there are some very striking, expressive outfits in the film, especially regarding Renate Reinsve’s character. What was your approach when selecting her wardrobe? You said some of the costume ideas came on the spot, it’s not always the case, I suppose?
No, it’s a very detailed, long process. I had the great pleasure of working with amazing and brave people. Since this was a coproduction, I had to find a photographer in England, a costume designer in Sweden, a makeup artist in Hamburg etc. and this can be very challenging. But I was very lucky with my costume designer from Sweden and makeup artist from Hamburg and interestingly they were both called Pia [costume designer Pia Aleborg and make-up artist Pia Karlotta Paprzik] and they made this amazing team. And since 2008, it was already clear in my head, I had described Lily and how she dresses outrageously, she dresses to part herself from the others and like when she comes to Gran Canaria it’s even more important for her to point out that she’s not from there, a vibe similar to “this is not me and I’m not like my sister”. So, she uses clothes almost like a weapon, very aggressively, but also, she’s very sensitive and as she breaks more and more up, she becomes more chameleon-like, Gritt is also like that, so Lily starts to adapt, she borrows clothes from others and her dress is really soften up, it becomes more and more childish. Besides, she was never allowed to be a child so this was also some of the directing process, she’s stuck in being a 14-year-old but as she comes to Gran Canaria she’s going to be more and more like a child, more and more soft and also her hair is more and more soft because she forgot her hair straightener, we planted that in the beginning of the movie, (laughs) so we were playing with these things, also she has herpes you know, and all these spots on her because of the scratching, so I wanted to play with that skin condition, in order to point out her emotional condition as well.
Great, and my colleague has a question, during the Q&A session following the film’s screening at the festival, you briefly touched on your own experiences regarding themes of siblinghood and family bonds portrayed in the film. Could you elaborate on that a bit more?
It’s important for me to say that this has nothing to do with me and my sister because I said that in an interview last week [early February] and still the headline was “The story of the sister” (!) and I was like “what the fuck, I said the exact opposite!” But you know, tabloids… I know you don’t write that sort of things, but it was frustrating, my experience with the other journalist. I have a sister, she’s two years older and we are so different, like so crazy different, and it’s always been a big puzzle for me and for her as well, like, how can we be sisters, we’re so different and this created a lot of fascination but also tension. And it’s insane how different we see our childhood and how differently we react to it. Our childhood was a bit strange, not like in the Canarian Islands but I grew up in something called Camp Hill, which is a village with people with Down syndrome and autism; from the anthroposophical view it’s a very beautiful thing, but it’s maybe a bit strange, or rather not strange but it’s strange to grow up there, and then move out, that’s more strange (laughs). I think that always fascinated me and I talk with people all the time about their sibling relationships so I was very fascinated about siblings and I think they have a big impact on their life and where you are, if you’re the younger or the older, it really defines you a lot. Do you have siblings?
I may be in a similar position, one can say, I have a half-brother living in the US from my mother’s first marriage, he’s 18 years older than me so with the addition of the age gap, I think, we’re nothing alike. We talk from time to time on the phone of course but our interests, music tastes, nothing is the same. From that perspective, I’m on board with you, I guess.
I see, you’re on board, yeah, you can relate, that’s great. And that’s even more normal, even in the film they have different fathers and it’s like 10 years age gap but in my life, it’s only two years we have the same parents and it’s still crazy. But my sister’s nothing like Diana and I’m nothing like Lily. Also, what I found funny is of course how childish you can become with your sibling, like you can really generate your most stupid small emotions, it goes back to this war of attention from your parents and there’s so much hurt there, that is also about your parents of course, so this is a theme I’m very interested in but it’s not from my life in that sense, it’s not autobiographical.
And I loved the music very much, can you talk about the choice of music please, with whom did you work?
Yes, I worked with my longtime collaborator Erik Ljunggren, we work together since film school, so he did all my films except some few ones where I made the music myself. So, for this one, we already chose or felt that the soundtrack would be based on air, which means wind instruments like flute and of course, vocal. We would use breathing sounds and whistling, we used breath, but the whistling went off, we were supposed to use it, but we cancelled. The air theme comes of course from the name and metaphor of the movie, Butterfly, hence the element of air.
I think there was a song matching your description, in a mainstream movie called “The Big Lebowski”, there was a song with a similar vocal, was it Ataypura, I’m not sure about the name, I’ll have to check.
Really? I have to check that, OK, great. The biggest inspiration actually came from a variety of songs and artists, because when I was editing, I had this Butterfly playlist that was written in the script, a bit of classical music, the Parallelograms by Linda Perhacs, so all the songs in the script ended up getting in the film. But then also for the score, when I was editing, I was editing with a new editor from Sweden, Kristin Grundstrøm, she’s super and to get her into the universe, I realized I needed to give her some music so we put this album of Meredith Monk that I’ve found, do you know this artist?
Yes, I do know her!
She’s amazing, an amazing artist, I love her. And she has this album called “Book of Days”, so I just plastered the whole film with that, and so when Erik saw some early edits, he was of course inspired by that and we used that a lot to help us edit and so that was the main inspiration in the score and if you listen to that album, you will really feel the same vibe.
I’m sorry, I’m checking the web since you said “Meredith Monk” and I think what I had in mind from the Big Lebowski soundtrack wasn’t Ataypura from Yma Sumac but actually I was referring to “The Walking Song” by Meredith Monk in that same OST! Yes, my Google search confirms it!
Oh my God! That is really cool! Wow, you’re very observant, then! That’s crazy because we don’t have any Meredith Monk left in the film, it’s just the skeleton, that’s so cool! Another artist I was really fascinated by is a musician from Kuwait, she’s amazing, her name is Fatima Al Qadiri, she was also a big influence in the music.
Oh, OK I don’t know her, but I’ll check, but again, I think the music was very good throughout the movie.
Great, I will tell Erik you said that, that he did a great job.
Oh, thank you so much! Another one of my colleague’s questions is about the festival journey of Butterfly, are there any more screenings? I hope there is!
I hope! I mean, it’s in the market now, here in Berlin, and my sales agent, Protagonist is dealing with that. Because with Gritt, we were dealing with it ourselves, so I knew more about it, but now I feel like it’s somewhere else, someone else is taking care of it. So, I don’t know where it will be, it would be nice to show Butterfly at the Gran Canaria, because I want to share the film with everyone who made it. I mean, Gritt was also of course a collective work, but Butterfly was truly a collective work, we involved half of the island, and we flew people down and it was just amazing what they gave from the island. So, for me that’s the most important thing to go there and show it. Other than that, we have something I cannot talk about, in terms of revealing and then I want to go to Latin America, I want to go to Asia so I hope it will fly there. It would be great with Turkey, I also want to come to Turkey, but I don’t know what festival do you have, Istanbul?
Yes, among others we have Istanbul Film Festival, coming this April, it would be so cool to see Butterfly here.
I will write this down and let them know, that would be great, absolutely!
Indeed! And finally, my usual question, do you have any upcoming projects?
Yes, of course, well, that’s why I’m here in Berlin now, I’m here to write for two weeks alone in this place, which is great. So, I’m trying to land from the festival and the premiere, trying to sink it in, but I already started to develop two projects this autumn. One is a film project and another new project with the lilithists [members of the Lilithism movement] to make a new ritual for menopause, what women go through, so we are not there all yet, but we will go through it and I want to make a beautiful and powerful ritual to mark that. Also, the ritual’s title in Norwegian is “Overgangen” which means the transition, because that’s the name in Norway for this condition like the transition, “overgangen” but that’s also a name that goes well with the times we are in right now, like maybe going into a new time, new order…
We’ll see…
Yes, we’ll see, crazy times! Oh my God, it’s so crazy, the world is crazy! That’s why with my next film project, I’m really trying to embody this atmosphere, and feeling, like what do we need now, what could be good, where do I want to be for the next 5 years, and also, how can we deal with this, how can we transmit some hope, or whatever. So, I’m trying to figure out where to put my energy.
Yes, I hear you. Well, thank you so much Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, for your time.
Thank you for taking the interest and time and feel free to address me if you have more questions, it was nice to see you again.
It was so nice to see you again as well, thank you very much.
- Interview: H. Necmi Öztürk
- Interview date: February 18th, 2026
- Questions: Burcu Meltem Tohum & H. Necmi Öztürk
