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Stars: Lea Myren, Ane Dahl Torp, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Flo Fagerli, Isac Calmroth, Malte Gårdinger, Ralph Carlsson | Written and Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt

Making her feature debut, Norwegian writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt serves up this body horror version of the Cinderella story, presented from the perspective of the titular ugly stepsibling. As such, it’s an inspired twist, taking a razor-sharp scalpel to impossible beauty standards and delivering buckets of vomit-worthy gore moments.

Set in a Scandinavian fairy-tale land, The Ugly Stepsister‘s story centres on plump, unattractive Elvira (Lea Myren), who arrives at the mansion owned by her mother’s new husband, only for him to immediately drop dead during their first family meal together. With her mother, Rebekka (Agnieszka Zulewska), now in charge, the stepfather’s beautiful daughter Agnes (the splendidly named Thea Sofie Loch Næss), is quickly reduced to the status of general servant and nicknamed Cinderella.

Most fairy tales were told and retold countless times before Walt Disney ever got his hands on them, and yet, the sensibility behind such animated classics as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Sleeping Beauty” has proven so popular on such an international scale that few know these stories’ darker origins. The family-friendly studio’s more-wholesome-than-horrifying approach gives Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt plenty of room to push back with “The Ugly Stepsister,” a deliciously extreme take on the beloved “Cinderella” legend, complete with broken noses, severed toes and other gory details befitting the Grimm bros.

Premiering in the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival, the graphic update swipes a different page from the Disney playbook: Instead of focusing on the familiar wench-in-waiting, Blichfeldt recenters her version on one of the tale’s iconic antagonists, finding empathy for the pig-nosed, slightly plump stepsister (played by Lea Myren) who’s...

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Bill Skarsgård, Cecilia Forss in Andreas Öhman's Simple Simon (top); Heikki Färm and Jani Kumpulainen's Steam of Life (bottom) Tirza, Simple Simon, Steam of Life, and Angel are four potential 2011 Academy Award contenders in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Those are, respectively, the submissions from The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Directed by Rudolf van den Berg after an eight-year hiatus, Tirza is a complex psychological drama in which a middle-aged Dutchman (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) comes unglued while attempting to find his missing daughter in Namibia. During his search he's befriended by a nine-year-old local girl who also happens to be a sex worker. Based on a novel by Arnon Grunberg, Tirza has received highly favorable reviews in the Dutch media. Whether the generally conservative Best Foreign Language Film-voting Academy members will go for the graphic dialogue and situations, the fragmented narrative (adapted by van den...