Sweden

“Things are never crazy in and of themselves. They only seem so from the outside.”De två saliga (The Blessed Ones or The Blessed Pair) is a 1986 made-for-television film directed by Ingmar Bergman, with a screenplay by Ulla Isaksson, based on her novel of the same name made two decades earlier in 1962. Isaksson’s novel, heavy in Christian imagery, follows a psychologist as he becomes more and more obsessed by Viveka and Sune, a former patient and her husband.Read More »

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A new feature documentary by Göran Hugo Olsson

Concerning Violence is a bold and fresh visual narrative from Africa based on archive material from Swedish documentaries 1966-1987 covering the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation from colonial rule. This powerful footage is combined with text from Frantz Fanon’s landmark book The Wretched of the Earth – written in 1960 and still a major tool for understanding and illuminating the neocolonialism happening today, as well as the unrest and the reactions against it.

“Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”Read More »

Fifteen year-old Pär and fourteen year-old Annika fall in love…
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Summer with Annika: A Swedish Love Story (1970)
Jean A. Gili
Author of very few works – four films in thirty-seven years, including Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007) – Roy Andersson made his first film in 1970, a tale of adolescent love set against the backdrop of a cruel tableau of the petite bourgeoisie wedged between conformity and frustration. Rediscovered now, A Swedish Love Story (En Kärlekshistoria) shows the inauguration of a critical gaze that has never deviated from its just distance.Read More »

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It’s almost summer in Sweden and minor indiscretions and misbehavior abound. Leffe likes to show off for his friends and play salacious pranks, especially when he’s drinking. Meanwhile, a righteous grade-school teacher doesn’t know where to draw the line: she insists her fellow educators need a bit of instruction. Then there are two young teenage girls who like to pose for sexy photos and to party, but one night in a park, one of them is found passed out drunk by a complete stranger.Read More »

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With periodic flashbacks and fantasy sequences, Exposed, in terms of its narrative structure at least, is a bit more complicated than your average sexploitation picture. While on the surface Lena is a typical, if flawed, central character the film lets us get into her head enough that even if we don’t completely see her as an innocent, we can at least feel for her. Her plight with Helge and his blackmailing ways is a sticky situation to be sure and while his coercion into the world of kinky sex allows for many titillating sequences, you can’t help but feel sorry for Lena. That said, she uses her sexuality to put herself in rather precarious situations and at times you almost wonder if she subconsciously wants the dysfunction that seems to follow her around. Consider this alongside the way that she’s treated by most of the men in the film, whose eyes linger on her quite voraciously, and you’re left trying to figure out how much of her dire situation she’s put herself in, rather than found herself in.Read More »

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Like modern times’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Sam and Jonathan, two travelling salesmen peddling novelty items, take us on a kaleidoscopic wandering through human destinies. A trip that shows us the beauty of single moments, the pettiness of others, the humour and tragedy that is in us, life’s grandeur as well as frailty of humanity. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence was Awarded Golden Lion for Best Film at the 2014 Venice International Film Festival.Read More »

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Conceived as an amusing diversion in the wake of Ingmar Bergman’s despairing trilogy, this comedy is the director’s first film in color, and it is an opulent visual feast. Working from a bawdy screenplay he cowrote with actor Erland Josephson, about a supercilious critic drawn into the dizzying orbit of a famous cellist, Bergman brings together buoyant comic turns by a number of his frequent collaborators, including Jarl Kulle, Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Bibi Andersson. All These Women, in which Bergman pokes fun at the pretensions of drawing-room art, possesses a distinctly playful atmosphere and carefree cadences.Read More »

Harry Munter, a sensitive, kind, appealing man in his twenties, lives with his parents. He’s an inventor, a bit of a mystic, maybe a genius, and a good son and grandson. He’s offered work in the U.S. But a friend has cancer and the world is changing in ways that provoke profound sadness

Amos Vogel in “Film as Subversive Art”: 　”A powerful, poetic image: the mystery of black against white, of an outsider walking on the water, on stilts, Christ-like, stubborn, the tension of his forward-leaning body reflecting his determination. This, indeed, is the topic of this intensely mysterious, lyrical film, one of the most original and disregarded works of contemporary cinema.”Read More »

Set in Sweden in 1782. Jacob, a young nobleman (Per Oscarsson) returns from France to his home and cherished sister Charlotte (Bibi Andersson) who is engaged to Baron Alsmeden (Jarl Kulle). The siblings close relationship becomes incestuous and with fear that the disclosure of Charlotte’s pregnancy will make society view them as libertines, the lovers ultimately choose to part. Jacob decides to leave the country and Charlotte is left to marry the Baron, but it is too late to prevent the final tragedy.Read More »