Beyond the Chill: Director Lucile Hadžihalilović Discusses Her Chilly New Thriller-Fable <em>The Ice Tower</em>
Lucile Hadžihalilović isn't known for traditional horror films, though her stylishly dark physical-fear movie Earwig nearly fits the bill. Yet while The Ice Tower doesn't focus on physical terror, it may yet rank as one of 2025’s creepiest films. Enthusiasts of Alfred Hitchcock will likely be enthralled — and not only due to its unnerving avian assault. (Though this feature certainly adds to the unease.)
A Hypnotic Tale: Blending Reality and Fantasy
The director's subtle approach makes The Ice Tower feel like a fairy tale: Teenager Jeanne, played by rising star Clara Pacini, runs away from her care home and slips into a film set where a fresh adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen is in production. On set, she encounters Cristina (brought to life by Marion Cotillard), who portrays the ice queen central to Andersen’s narrative. Away from the camera, the actress exudes cruelty and allure in equal measure — Jeanne can’t look away by Cristina. What unfolds as the orphan descends into the dreamlike world of filmmaking is a hypnotic coming-of-age story.
Building the Fantasy: Balancing Reality and Illusion
Numerous directors who attempt to capture a Lynchian dream tone often overcomplicate or turn their movies into puzzling enigmas. The director chose a simpler approach: navigate “the line between reality and fantasy” by revisiting Andersen’s source material, in actual and symbolic terms. Early in the film, Jeanne recites his tale to a small child, establishing an ethereal mood. When Jeanne winds up in a Snow Queen movie, Hadžihalilović explains it gave her “a way to escape, to build a world, a universe, that has its own reality and rules."
Our focus was on capturing the constructed elements […] preferring artificial snow over natural, and painted backdrop mountains.
That universe, in The Ice Tower, is deliberately artificial. Its constructed nature becomes uncanny; there are moments where you could mistake The Ice Tower for a raw live-action version of Frozen. (Still, she hasn't, she is unfamiliar with the Disney movie.)
A Primal Journey: Escaping into Another World
The protagonist's fundamental journey — young woman running from home, and entering a gateway into another world — enhances the movie’s feel of magical fear. The Ice Tower would complement with Pan’s Labyrinth, with Cotillard filling in for physical creatures. The director intended Jeanne to see “the Snow Queen for real,” then “little by little become more and more involved in this shooting until the moment she’s inside the story itself.”
This imparts the movie a feeling of surreal reasoning, a rhythmic sensation that required a great amount of care when it came not just to the film’s rich imagery, but to the audio as well. “We tried to make it very expressive and emotional, with not too many elements — we just removed many things, not only in the image, but a lot in the sound,” she notes.
Subtle Acting: The Lead Actresses' Chemistry
Marion Cotillard, who initially collaborated with the director two decades ago on Innocence, embodies that same minimalist style. “I think she intuitively remembered how I’d like the actors to play this kind of planned or very restrained performance,” she explains. Pacini, on the other hand, brings a wide-eyed openness to Jeanne’s tumultuous relationship with Cristina. Their attraction peaks with what the director calls “the big kiss,” a bizarre, operatic moment she worried might not resonate. “I thought Maybe it’s not going to work,” she confesses. But seeing it on set made her feel the moment was enchanting: “Wow, there is something in it.”
Dark Origins: Reimagining Andersen’s Fairy Tale
The Ice Tower is not a faithful retelling of The Snow Queen, but Hadžihalilović ended up drawing from Andersen’s fairy-tale work, which she calls “very dark and very violent and very cruel.” She also breaks it apart with realism, obscuring anchoring scenes of brutal truth throughout the narrative. By the end, plenty is left unsaid. The director hints that Jeanne may even be “inventing the film within the film,” a subtle suggestion that everything on screen might be a dream.
Hadžihalilović lives for the complications. Her characters are more flawed than Andersen’s. The risks are higher. They’re well-defined, but deeply layered. And yet by inverting classic mythical narratives, Hadžihalilović hoped to get even closer to what Andersen did in his day: abandoning the anchor of logic.
“[The Ice Tower] is not realistic at all,” she says with a knowing grin. But it is seductive, unique, and absolutely chilling.
The Ice Tower debuts in limited cinemas on Oct. 3.