Norwegian director, producer and scriptwriter Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid, with a background in journalism and creative documentary. To date, she has directed five short films. The latest one is A Home on Every Floor, in which the director combines the captivating spoken word performance of a Norwegian-Eritrean with her miniature childhood home to impressive results. Her objective is to expose the darkness beneath some nostalgic memories. The film showed at Hot Docs and also at DOC NYC.

She has previously worked as a journalist for various media vehicles in her home nation Norway, including Verdens Gang, Klassekampen, and Morgenbladet. Her previous films screened in various festivals and won multiple awards.

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Paul Risker – How would you describe your personal relationship with cinema and why has it become a means of creative expression?

Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid – I began journalism school at the age of 19 and loved it. After a few years in the industry, I guess I felt a bit limited by the ways journalistic stories are told. There are a lot of rules, often for good reason, but I didn’t feel like I was done experimenting.

I wanted to explore other methods in storytelling, and stumbled over a part-time documentary course. Growing up, my family swore to literature, and the films we saw as kids were mostly action movies and blockbusters. At this part time course, and later at film school, I was introduced to what film can really be and do, and it somehow felt like I had found my path.

To me, film is an essential way of tackling stories in collaboration with others. I’ve never liked to work alone, and I love watching a project grow when bright minds think together. I guess that’s also how I’ve found direction in my projects, by working with and learning from my colleagues. Cinema speaks to our emotions, and not only to facts and reason, it’s both incredibly difficult and incredibly fun to find the right direction for a film project, and pull through with it. Cinema has this magical ability to surprise me, also in the process, a project never turns out the way I initially thought, and I love that.

PR – A journalist as well as a filmmaker, you move between fiction and documentary. Do these two professions and forms complement one another to inform and shape your work?

SRH – The short answer is yes, the two complement each other. At the same time, journalism and filmmaking are widely different fields. Going into documentary, I brought with me experience with ethics, research tools, as well as a nerve for writing from journalism, but now, I make sure not to mix the two. I’m a writer, I don’t do television journalism, because it’s too far from what I would wanna do with a camera, and writing has its own qualities. In the beginning it was more blended, but working with film now, my journalism background doesn’t really affect what I do, it’s just two different jobs, that I’m lucky enough to be able to do.

PR – What was the genesis of A Home on Every Floor?

SRH – I saw Hanna Asefaw perform the poem the film is based on during a festival in 2020. It was a rare opening in the many pandemic lockdowns, and we had just been locked into our homes for several months due to Covid-restrictions. The text struck me, as well as Hannas presence in what she described. She was both confrontational and vulnerable on stage, and I thought it was so visual.

We later started collaborating, adapting the poem into a film, and it was a long development period, again due to more lockdowns in the many months that followed. During the pandemic, I also watched several short films by Swedish director and animator Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and was very inspired by her world building, sense of humour and eye for details. Since the apartment building Hanna grew up in was under construction while we developed the film, we decided to approach the story from a completely different angle, and create a whole new world where the film would take place. I think it was production designer Julia Jayko Fosslands idea, to let the story unfold in a miniature world. And when we got that idea, we knew we had our film.

PR – Is A Home on Every Floor better described as a narrative memory than a story borne out of a poem, because it’s about Asefaw’s memories and reflections?

SRH – In many ways, yes. It could be described as a narrative memory, as both the text and the film are primarily based on Hanna’s memories. I was very aware that this wasn’t going to be a traditional «fly on the wall»-observational-documentary. A Home on Every Floor is subjective, it’s based on Hanna’s experiences, as well as memories from some of her family members and childhood photos from that time.

On the other hand, the story is born out of Hanna’s poem, because the poem was written to be performed and heard, not read. I would say that Hanna’s presence is key for both the text and the film – without her voice and face, it would be a completely different experience, and I wanted to preserve her energy in the film. To let the audience understand that this was indeed coming from Hanna, and it is indeed based on subjective memories and experiences.

We used several methods to emphasize this. First of all, there is the doll house-effect, letting only Hanna intervene with the miniature model, indirectly telling the audience that she is in control of this universe. Secondly, we developed a suggestive production design, and created rooms to symbolise the characters she described, instead of going for a more objective animated technique with actual characters. The rooms in the film give hints of the lives lived there, but never claims to know what those lives actually looked like – I wanted to leave that to the imagination of the audience.

PR – What was the thought process behind the captivating idea of blending Hanna Asefaw’s spoken word performance with her childhood reimagined in miniature form?

SRH – As for the development of the story, we also had a unique opportunity. Usually, when making a film, some things need to be explained, so the audience can follow. Here, most of the important things were said in Hanna’s poem, and therefore we were able to experiment with visual metaphors, pace and atmosphere in a different way than I’ve been able to before. We worked a lot with making the film lift the poem, by giving it new layers, there was always the problem of the images competing with Hannas words, and it was a fine balance in post production.

I also wanted the homes presented in the miniature to be relatable to others, especially to people in my generation. We left a lot of nostalgic clues, by including props and TV-shows that were typical of that time, and that Hanna had also surrounded herself with. In that way, the story wasn’t just Hannas anymore, but the story of a childhood many can see themselves in and remember. Again, working with memory.

PR – You claim that your film enters a child’s perspective. Does Asefaw instead appropriate her younger self’s point of view, that along with the unreliability of memory, creates layers of truth and the impression of what she remembers?

SRH – There are always different layers of truth, depending on who holds it. It was a dramaturgical choice to begin in a childish world, surrounding it with some of the magic of childhood memories. I wanted to let the audience understand that Hanna’s story has a lot of nuance. Growing up in social housing can be both good and bad, and we tend to focus on the bad things. Instead, Hanna uses a lot of time in her poem on the good things: the sense of culture, community, love and childish curiosity, before moving on to the difficult experiences and destinies of her neighbours.

As she says several times in the film, “I didn’t understand until years later”, describing Anine’s violent father and Kasper’s story of how his dad passed away from an overdose – I feel like those words are quite transparent when it comes to the narrator’s point of view. We begin in a childhood universe, to later reveal that Hanna is looking back on these memories as an adult.

It’s not like she intentionally appropriates her youngers self’s point of view, it was an active choice to let the film do so for a few minutes, to let the audience know what was a stake, before starting to tear it down.

PR – A Home on Every Floor addresses the theme of gentrification and economic inequality. The basic necessity of four walls, a floor and a ceiling are monetised with indifference and communicates how society is yet to fully shed its Darwinian skin, where survival and worth is measured in wealth. Your thoughts on this reading of the film and whether you’d describe it as an optimistic or cynical film?

I would definitely say this film is optimistic! My goal was to bring the audience into the warmth, mystery and love that Hanna clearly shows her childhood home. It was intentional, maybe a bit naive, but I thought, if we can show and remind people of what a home can look and feel like, it will somehow defeat the perception of homes as “property” – objects that can be bought and sold for profit. Neighbors and belonging are what constitutes a home, not its current market value. The film is not meant to be cynical, but it’s absolutely angry, for good reason.

SRH – The film is aware of the ever-increasing wealth gap, and giving the Eritrean experience a voice makes it a political film, albeit it’s subtle. It feels the intent is to not talk at the audience but either begin or continue conversation around the themes it addresses. Would you agree?

I’ve never wanted to use film as a way of explaining a reality to an audience. I believe in questions without any clear answers, as well as cinemas ability to move people.

Norway has one of the most neoliberal housing markets in Europe, and our politicians have made housing a key driver of economic inequality. I wanted to use this film to discuss that, by, again, reminding people of what’s at stake.

If I understand you correctly, and I’m not sure if I am, Hanna’s minority background gives the film an extra layer? If so, of course. Hanna as a second generation immigrant represents many of the people who are placed in municipal housing. Her parents being refugees, fleeing war, gave them a more difficult starting point in Norway than for me, for example, who grew up in a white middle class family. She also uses the poem to describe the discrimination her mother was subjected to when she was giving birth, so the story is absolutely nuanced by Hanna’s minority perspective. If you look at it from another angle, Anine’s story is also political, as well as Kaspers, who belongs to the Norwegian majority. The challenges they all shared were their socioeconomic backgrounds. The social housing complex Hanna grew up in accommodates a variety of stories of how society treats, or fails to help, people who struggle. I wanted to make this film, without making it a victim-story, no-one are only victims, a person holds more than that. Again, it’s about nuance.

I see this film as a tiny contribution to what I hope will be a myriad of films on housing, class and community.

PR – How do you look back on the experience of making A Home on Every Floor?

SRH – I look back on making A Home on Every Floor with great gratitude. It was a crazy production with a low budget, and it wouldn’t have become what it is today without all the amazing people working tirelessly to make it happen.

PR – Your films have confronted a range of subjects: gentrification, climate change and rape. How do you compare and contrast your films?

SRH – I see my prior work as chapters. It takes several years to make a film, and naturally, life moves on while working – one project can give birth to the idea of another, but not always. My prior projects are also results of me wanting to test different methods and explore things I haven’t tried before – to learn, but also to develop as a filmmaker. What links them all together is the hybrid methods, the fine line between fiction and documentary, that I find very attractive. The films also deal with topics I find important in our time, and characters I often feel are left out in the stories told by the commercial film industry.

PR – Is filmmaking transformative, and where/how do you change as a person?

SRH – Great question! Yes, filmmaking is transformative for me. I learn as I go with each project, and I’ve changed a lot since making my first «one man band»-short films. I don’t know exactly when these changes happen, it could be through meetings with people I would never have met without a project, or through an especially successful day on set, where everything just clicks. There is a lot of doubt in filmmaking, and I hate that, not knowing. At the same time, working with something that is always moving is a gift, and I’ve somehow started to appreciate the process.

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Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid is pictured at the top of this interview. The other image is a still of A Home on Every Floor.