Tomas Alfredson - Directing Career

Directing Career

Alfredson's career started at Svensk Filmindustri, where he worked as an assistant. He was involved in the creation of the Swedish television channel TV4, where he worked in the entertainment department. One of his successes was the Swedish adaptation of Fort Boyard, "Fångarna på Fortet". Alfredson then moved on to Sveriges Television, creating television series such as Ikas TV-kalas, a children's television show starring Ika Nord, who would later appear in Alfredson's 2008 film Let the Right One In. According to Nord, Alfredson was "only 25, but already extremely knowledgeable". In 1994 Alfredson directed Bert, another tv production based on the Bert diaries, a popular series of teenage novels written in the diary form. A feature film, Bert: The Last Virgin, based on the series was made in 1995, for which Alfredson received a Guldbagge nomination for Best Direction.

Alfredson joined the Swedish comedy group Killinggänget as a director in 1999. "I saw that they were a little funnier than the others, and a little more thorough", he said. His first collaboration with the group was a 1999 series of four television films, including the mockumentary Screwed in Tallinn, which depicts a group of Swedish bachelors who travel to Estonia by bus in the hopes of finding Estonian girlfriends. The 2004 film Four Shades of Brown, directed by Alfredson, is Killinggänget's only feature film to date. The film intertwines four unrelated stories with a common theme of betrayal, in particular parents betraying their children. The film received four Guldbagge awards, including Best Direction for Alfredson.

Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist released his debut horror novel Let the Right One In in 2004. After reading the novel, Alfredson wanted to get involved in a film adaptation, and approached Lindqvist: "They was a crowd banging on his door to make a movie, so I was #40 or something. When we met, he knew of me and he liked what I'd done previously, and we got along together very well." The film tells the story of a 12-year-old bullied boy who befriends a child vampire in early 1980s Blackeberg, Sweden. In addition to directing, Alfredson edited the film in collaboration with Dino Jonsäter.

Let the Right One In premiered on 26 January 2008 at the Göteborg International Film Festival, where Alfredson won the Festival's Nordic Film Prize. The film went on to win additional awards, including the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film quickly became an international success, with the rights being sold to more than forty countries before its theatrical release on 24 October 2008. Domestically, the film won five Guldbagge Awards, with Alfredson receiving his second Guldbagge Award for Best Direction.