NewFest: Fuck the Cistem
An entry in the queer film festival’s 2025 lineup, ‘Sauna’ is a delicate love story set in Copenhagen that examines desire, identity, and the steamy connection between a cis gay man and a trans man.
The first feature from Danish filmmaker Mathias Broe, Sauna had its New York premiere as part of NewFest this month. Broe wrote the script with screenwriters William Lippert and Mads Ananda Lodahl, basing it on their experiences as queer people living in Copenhagen. The first Danish film to star a trans lead, Sauna follows Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen), a young cis gay man, as his life is upended after he falls in love with William (Nina Rask), a trans man. The director’s own partner started transitioning during production, and trans people were consulted as the screenplay was written. These factors combine to make Sauna a tender and genuine film.
During the day, Johan works at a gay bathhouse cleaning up cum-stained sheets and glory holes in the showers. But at night, he frequents gay bars and clubs. He meets William on Grindr, not realizing he’s a trans man until they meet in person. While he’s initially shocked, Johan invites William to spend the night. They quickly fall in love, but William is at the beginning of his transition. The film portrays Danish law as unforgiving to trans people. Relying on leftover testosterone from his friends, William is anxious to get his own, but the gender clinic isn’t making it easy. Johan will do anything to support him, but he keeps doing the wrong thing. William, for his part, is still trying to figure out who he is, fighting to be comfortable in his own skin.
It would have been easy for Sauna to be a movie about Johan having a crisis over whether he’s gay or not after falling in love with a gay trans man, but that’s not the case. He never once wonders if he’s still gay, but the film is still primarily centered on him and not William; the film suffers for it. Johan and William are the film’s leads, but Johan is the main character. William doesn’t have a scene without Johan, leaving you wanting to know more about William and his day-to-day life as a trans student in Copenhagen away from Johan. Sauna is Denmark’s first movie with a trans lead, which is all the more remarkable considering that Christine Jorgensen began her transition here in the 1950s. It feels like an oversight not to feature more from William’s perspective and focus primarily on Johan’s.
Running at 109 minutes, Sauna is slow in places, but you’re never hoping it will be over soon. It does make you wonder how the film will end because as Johan’s well-intentioned actions push William away, you don’t know whether their relationship will survive. Shot like the Euro arthouse indie film that it is, Sauna is moody and Mathias Broe isn’t afraid to show it all, including explicit sex scenes featuring cunnilingus and cum.
Broe has a promising future as a queer filmmaker, and he was brave enough to tackle a controversial topic during a moment when other directors might have shied away from it. It’s exciting to see what he will do next.
