Olivia Colman weds a wicker husband in Zurich premiere Wicker
Olivia Colman plays a medieval fisherwoman who marries a husband made of wicker in Wicker, with Alexander Skarsgård playing the woven spouse. Peter Dinklage plays the basket weaver who builds him. The film is directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, adapted from The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills-Jones, as reported by Variety.
It premiered at Sundance and then celebrated its European premiere at the Zurich Film Festival. That second launch matters for a smaller film, because a European premiere gives buyers, press and festival audiences a first local look. Zurich listed Colman and Skarsgård as guests appearing for the film.
Zurich programmes WICKER as a 2025 production from the United States, classified as a comedy. The festival describes the story as an exploration of envy, desire and the pitfalls of social norms, according to the Zurich Film Festival. The cast also includes Elizabeth Debicki alongside Colman and Skarsgård.
Colman’s character lives on the edge of her village. Colman described her as a fisherwoman shunned and ostracised for being ugly, smelly and unmarriable. The husband is literally a basket. Marriage to him turns rejection into a strange, public romance.
Colman said she had never read anything like the script. She ranked it in her top three scripts she has loved. She joked that such an unusual love story needs a simple sales pitch. The only way to sell it, she said, is with a picture of Skarsgård as a very sexy basket.
Skarsgård said the part terrified him. He feels more comfortable playing dark, twisted, demented characters. Playing open, tender and sincere left him exposed. The wicker husband asks for warmth, not menace.
The woven body was built for real. Wētā Workshop created Skarsgård’s wicker frame with practical effects, meaning physical costumes, make-up and props made in a workshop rather than computer-generated imagery added later. That craft lets actors touch, hold and react to the weave in the scene. It also gives the husband weight and texture on camera.
What makes this stand out on a busy festival slate is that physical gamble. For fans, this means a love story where the fantasy is something you could tap with a finger. A lonely woman, a maker, and a husband who creaks.
