My Name Is Oona

‘My name is Oona,’ says the little girl at the beginning of the film and she will repeat it in a loop throughout the movie. ‘Oona’ means: the unique one, the fairy queen. She’s the daughter of filmmaker Gunvor Nelson, who observes her at play in My Name is Oona while reflecting to a certain extent on her own childhood. We experience Oona in her social surroundings, with her friends, fighting, riding horses. Using a wide array of recording, developing and editing techniques, Nelson reduces the action to the essential, lending the film an expressionist touch. As such, it is never about depicting a realistic representation of a syrupy childhood, but instead about the abstraction of childhood itself. Oona rattles off the days of the week aloud. A male voice interrupts her list, frustrating Oona’s system and her reasoning. Oona only lets herself be side-tracked for a second, then she’s back at it again. Steve Reich, who produced the soundtrack for the film, loops the signals, creating an acoustic counterpart to the concrete situations. The chirping of a bird can be heard, a woman singing softly, perhaps a lullaby, familiar. Oona keeps going. (Berlinale)