Maria Bäck to Debut ‘Brave New Love’ at Locarno, Where She Says a Love Triangle “Refuses Easy Answers”

Maria Bäck’s new writer-director feature, “Brave New Love,” is set to premiere at Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, according to an interview published by The Hollywood Reporter on Aug. 5, 2026. The film centers on a love triangle designed, in Bäck’s words, to resist tidy moral conclusions, with the director positioning the story as an inquiry into how desire collides with what people feel they are “allowed” to want.

In the interview, Bäck frames the movie’s emotional core around motherhood and shame, describing the experience as something that can shape intimacy and self-understanding. She connects those themes to the film’s structure and dialogue, saying the characters are placed under pressure as their relationships develop, rather than being solved by a single revelation. The article characterizes Bäck’s approach as provocative but rooted in everyday tensions between longing, obligation and self-justification.

Bäck also draws on Greek mythology as a reference point for the film’s emotional logic, adding classical resonance to a contemporary romance setting. The Hollywood Reporter describes her interest in using those stories not as plot templates, but as thematic scaffolding, reflecting on how older narratives can mirror modern conflicts about desire and consequence.

According to the report, Bäck’s approach to the film includes building multiple pathways for the characters to act, pause, and reconsider, resulting in what the interviewer describes as a triangle that does not resolve into a clear winner. Bäck’s comments emphasize that the screenplay is constructed to sustain uncertainty, with each character’s decisions shaped by competing needs rather than a single guiding principle.

The interview also presents Bäck’s “Brave New Love” as a modern romance that treats intimacy as both personal and social, with characters influenced by how they imagine others will judge them. That focus, the article indicates, ties her treatment of shame to broader questions about reputation and belonging, including how family roles can intensify a person’s fears about rejection or failure.

Ahead of the Locarno premiere, Bäck’s statements place the film within a framework of contemporary European art cinema, using the festival platform to engage international audiences with themes of gendered expectations and the emotional cost of trying to conform. Locarno’s role as a prominent venue for new work will determine early critical and industry response, with the festival screening functioning as the project’s main public introduction at this stage.

For readers following festival lineups and distribution developments, the next steps center on the film’s formal Locarno presentation, including how the festival positions the title in its programming and how subsequent coverage describes audience and critical reaction. Any additional release plans, casting details, or credits beyond what is in the published interview would be confirmed through festival materials and official film listings.