Samtaler på en båt/Conversations on a boat

2026
‍Shortfilm 15 min.

After Life’s Midpoint – and the Love We Never Dared Speak Of

Two women sit in a boat on the Oslofjord. The water is still, the wind is gentle, the conversation tentative. It’s a summer day, but something unfinished hangs in the air between them. An old closeness, maybe a forgotten glance, an unspoken truth. A charge that isn’t about wild feelings or dramatic revelations – but about what was never said.

My short film Conversations on a Boat revolves around Karin and Siv, two women in their fifties. They share a history – as colleagues, as artists, perhaps as something more. That “something more” has never been put into words, only existed there like a quiet breathing beneath the surface. They have moved on with their lives, had other relationships, built careers. But neither has completely let go of what could have been. And now they sit here, in the middle of the water, trying to approach the past – or maybe the future.

This is a story about love, but not the youthful kind. It’s a story about lesbian longing after life’s midpoint. The kind of love that has matured in silence, carried in the body for decades, sometimes denied, sometimes forgotten, but never truly disappeared. The kind of love that maybe never got to exist, because time, society, or they themselves weren’t ready.

I wanted to explore how it feels when you find yourself there – no longer young, but not finished – and start to question the choices you’ve made. How many of us have lived parts of our lives in compromise? How many women have felt a deeper pull towards another woman, but pushed it aside because it didn’t fit? Because it was “too late,” “too hard,” “too complicated”?

Lesbian desire after fifty is almost invisible in film and media. As if it’s expected to have ceased. As if we’re only allowed to be passionate and alive when we’re young. There is still a kind of cultural blindness to the queer experience in old age – as if identity, desire, and love are things that end with wrinkles and grey hair. Conversations on a Boatwants to say something different.

Karin is a woman who has lived her life with outward control and inner secrets. Siv is more laid-back, perhaps freer, perhaps more reconciled with her past. But neither of them has really confronted what was – or could have been – between them. Over the course of the conversation, they move from artistic reflections to more personal confessions. They circle around it. Test each other. The silences almost say more than the words.

It’s a film where the lesbian element isn’t shouted – but felt in every movement. In every hesitant touch, in every interrupted memory, in every sentence that never quite finishes. The lesbian experience isn’t always dramatic. It can be quiet, embedded in the everyday, in friendship, in collaboration – until something awakens. A scent, a gesture, an unexpected closeness. And suddenly, it’s there again.

What happens then? When the body is older, when life is mapped out, when there’s everything to lose – but you still feel that pounding? Do you dare take the step? Do you dare say: “I loved you. I might still love you.”

There’s a kind of freedom after life’s midpoint – but also a fear. Not the fear of what others will think. But the fear that you missed out on the most important thing. That you chose wrong. That you let something beautiful slip away, out of fear that it didn’t fit.

In Conversations on a Boat, I try to create a space for that courage. A space where two women get to be whole – complex, desiring, doubting, loving. Where the queer isn’t explained or defended, but just allowed to be. The boat on the fjord becomes a room outside of time and norms. A space in between where it’s possible to breathe, to remember, maybe to love again.

Because maybe it isn’t too late. Maybe something new begins right here – in the middle of what feels like the end. Maybe the love is still there, in a glance that no longer looks away.

Starring: Gjertrud Jynge and Ågot Sendstad
Production company: Sabina Jacobsson
Producer: Sabina Jacobsson
Creative responsible: Sabina Jacobsson
Photo: Mathias Ingvoldstad
Sound Engineer: Anthony Barratt
Recording manager: Tina Holth
Composer: Per Platou
Soundmix: Gunn Tove Grønsberg

Supported by: NFI, BKV, SKS, FFF