Josefin Arnell

These days, everybody wants to live forever, not only oligarchs and world leaders. Longevity treatments could include getting bitten by a vampire, which would make these bloodsuckers suddenly be in high demand. Such is the fate of the famous Styrian vampire Carmilla in Josefin Arnell’s revisiting of Sheridan Le Fanu’s eponymous 1872 Gothic novella. Played by Florentina Holzinger, Carmilla finds herself in present-day Austria—a place saturated with imperial nostalgia and eager tourists—where she has become a sought-after commodity.

All Carmilla longs for is to rejoin her deceased lover and, meanwhile, enter upon her inheritance. But she and two other vampires visiting from the Caribbean are pursued by a horde of wellness fans, influencers, longevity gurus, and bureaucrats—played by a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors, including members of the Viennese art scene. Arnell’s satirical splatter film inverts the original: The aristocratic predator becomes the quarry of today’s consumerist middle class that dreams of eternal life while living out its inexhaustible kink for self-exploitation and decadence.

Josefin Arnell (1984, Ljusnedal, Sweden) is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores how violence and social hierarchies shape everyday life, using dark humor to navigate contemporary systems and their impossible demands. Her work has been shown, among others, at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; WIELS, Brussels; Cell Project Space, London; Index, Stockholm; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; the 7th Athens Biennale; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Riga International Film Festival; and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Arnell won the Theodora Niemeijer Prize in 2018 and was nominated for the Dutch Prix de Rome in 2023. She lives in Amsterdam.