Sweden

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Under The Sun is a wonderful Swedish film about a lonely farmer, his slightly shady best friend and the beautiful, but mysterious, woman who steps into their lives.

The movie, which was nominated for Best Foreign Film in the 2000 edition of the Oscars (Spain’s All About My Mother took home the prize), is a gorgeously shot love story and character study that’s as sweet as honey.
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Ostensibly, the plot sounds a little pulpy, almost noirish, but that’s the furthest thing from the reality. While this is a story about love, friendship and trust, it’s also about growing up — Olof is a 40-year-old virgin who can’t read or write, and the ad is his attempt to finally meet a woman.Read More »

Three sisters return home. Elin leaves a modelling job and a once-so glamorous lifestyle in Paris to be at her mother’s 70th birthday party. Lova gives up her studies in London to live at home until she sorts herself out. Katarina’s is rapidly losing control of her double life as the married mother of two children and a hard-working surgeon with a lover, and all the while their mother, Sigrid, is preparing determinedly for the big upcoming party in her honour.Read More »

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Based on a pair of novels by Vilhelm Moberg, Jan Troell’s 3-hour epic follows a Swedish family of farmers (and assorted other family members and villagers) as they make the arduous journey to the promised land of America. That’s not entirely an accurate summation, however. The movie is halfway over before they even get on the boat. The first hour and a half details their living conditions, and feels a bit like Pelle the Conqueror. Mid-19th-century Swedish peasants laboring to little avail, under the thumbs of cruel landowners, struggling to harvest enough to survive, undereducated and impoverished. The voyage over is even worse, plagued by lice, maggots, scurvy, seasickness, short tempers, poor food, cramped quarters, and death. It’s not until the last quarter of the movie when we get to America, which is a comparatively sunny portion of the movie… although still beset by language barriers, lack of guidance, and the realization that the country isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.Read More »

After having neglected her children for many years, world famous pianist Charlotte visits her daughter Eva in her home. To her surprise she finds her other daughter, Helena, there as well. Helena is mentally disabled, and Eva has taken Helena out of the institution where their mother had placed her. The tension between Charlotte and Eva only builds up slowly, until a nightly conversation releases all the things they have wanted to tell each other.Read More »

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It Rains on Our Love / Det regnar på vår kärlek (1946) was Bergman’s fourth film and it paints a very romantic picture of poverty and love on the run. Two young lovebirds from the wrong side of the tracks find peace of a kind in an idyllic, rural squatters’ community. It’s like a polished hybrid of a Frank Borzage film and the more sentimental elements of Italian neo-realism. The paternalistic narrative voice of the film is actually incarnated in one of the characters, a kindly lawyer.Read More »

Sixteen-year-old Lilja and her only friend, the young boy Volodja, live in Russia, fantasizing about a better life. One day, Lilja falls in love with Andrej, who is going to Sweden, and invites Lilja to come along and start a new life.Read More »

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A Hole in My Heart (Swedish: Ett hål i mitt hjärta) is a 2004 Swedish drama film written and directed by Lukas Moodysson, starring Thorsten Flinck, Sanna Bråding, Björn Almroth and Goran Marjanovic. The story revolves around a man who makes a pornographic film in his apartment with a friend and an attention-seeking starlet, while his teenage son stays in his room and listens to industrial rock.

The film is notable for its explicit imagery, including close-ups of vaginal reconstruction surgery, an anal sex scene without the use of lubrication, a masturbation scene with a toothbrush, and an extended scene about the woman’s “smelly vagina”. Moodysson leaves the interpretation of the film to the viewer: “I have cooked you a delicious meal, but I’m not going to chew it for you.”Read More »

Plot Synopsis from ALLMOViE:

Though he made allusions to his own life in all of his films, Fanny and Alexander was the first overtly autobiographical film by Ingmar Bergman. Taking his time throughout (188 minutes to be exact), Bergman recreates several episodes from his youth, using as conduits the fictional Ekdahl family. Alexander, the director’s alter ego, is first seen at age 10 at a joyous and informal Christmas gathering of relatives and servants. Fanny is Alexander’s sister; both suffer an emotional shakedown when their recently-widowed mother (Ewa Froling) marries a cold and distant minister. Stripped of their creature comforts and relaxed family atmosphere, Fanny and Alexander suddenly find their childhood unendurable. The kids’ grandmother (Gunn Wallgren) “kidnaps” Fanny and Alexander for the purpose of showering them with the first kindness and affection that they’ve had since their father’s death. This “purge” of the darker elements of Fanny and Alexander’s existence is accomplished at the unintentional (but applaudable) cost of the hated stepfather’s life. Ingmar Bergman insisted that Fanny and Alexander, originally a multipart television series pared down to feature-film length, represented his final film, though within a year after its release he was busy with several additional Swedish TV projects, and he returned to make one more theatrical release movie before his death – the 2003 Saraband. Oscars went to Fanny and Alexander for Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography (Sven Nykvist), Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration.Read More »

8 episodes, ranging from experimental to documentary to conventional narrative cinema, made by the most prominent Swedish film directors of the time to answer the question of what stimulates them most.Read More »