Contemporary Swedish Cinema
Roy Andersson had a breakthrough with his first feature-length film, A Swedish Love Story in 1969, and was awarded four prizes at the International Film Festival in Berlin the same year. Following the financial and critical disaster of his 1975 film Giliap he took a two-decade break from film directing. In March 1996, Andersson began filming Songs from the Second Floor, that premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Special Jury Prize. Andersson's return to filmmaking was a major success with the critics, earning him five Guldbagge Awards in Sweden for best film, direction, cinematography, screenplay and sound.
Director Lasse Hallström made his feature-length film debut in 1975 with the comedy A Guy and a Gal (En Kille och en tjej) featuring the well-known Swedish comic duo Magnus Härenstam and Brasse Brännström. He was the man behind most of ABBA's music videos, as well as the film ABBA: The Movie. My Life as a Dog, released in Sweden in 1985, was nominated for two 1987 Academy Awards, for directing and for adapted screenplay. In 1987, it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Following the film's international success, Hallström has worked on American films – What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules, Chocolat and Casanova, among others.
In the comedy genre Lasse Åberg has directed and also starred in some successful films that, although not praised by film critics, were box-office successes and have received cult status. The first one was Repmånad in 1979, followed by Sällskapsresan in 1980 and its four sequels. Although not part of the Sällskapsresan series, Repmånad was very similar in style, depicting an inept outsider in various situations and traditions typical for Sweden in a humorous way.
Lukas Moodysson's first feature-length film, Show Me Love (aka Fucking Åmål) was a huge success in Sweden. The lovingly depicted teenage angst of the main characters played well with the audience and won four Guldbagge Awards in 1998. The follow-up Together (Tillsammans) (2000) was an upbeat comedy, albeit with some darkly satirical undertones, set in a 1970s Stockholm commune. But Moodyson's filmmaking then took a radically different direction. The 2002 Lilya 4-ever (Lilja 4-ever) is a dark, tragic story about trafficking in human beings, and the 2004 A Hole in My Heart (Ett hål i mitt hjärta) deals with an amateur porn movie recording, causing some controversy due to its shocking and disturbing footage.
Other young Swedish filmmakers that have seen major success in recent years include Lebanon-born director Josef Fares, with the comedies Jalla! Jalla! (2000) and Kopps (2003), and the refugee drama Zozo (2005), Iranian-born Reza Parsa with the drama Before the Storm (Före stormen) (2000), and Maria Blom, with the comedy Dalecarlians (Masjävlar) (2004).
During the late 1990s early 2000s several young filmmakers started exploring genre-films which had earlier been almost non-existent, Mikael Håfström's slasher film Strandvaskaren, Anders Banke's vampire comedy Frostbite, Anders Jacobsson's satire Evil Ed and Måns Mårlind's and Björn Stein's fantasy-thriller Storm. Non of these films proved to be successful in Sweden but went to receive both acclaim and audience in foreign countries.
More recently, Tomas Alfredson's (son of Hasse Alfredson) romantic vampire film/drama film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) (2008) received widespread acclaim from critics all around the world, becoming one of the best reviewed films of the year. In this particular tale, a bullied boy falls in love with a vampire girl who has just moved in next door. Also in the same year, director Jan Troell returns with yet another period drama, Everlasting Moments (Maria Larssons Eviga Ögonblick) (2008).
In 2009, the feature films The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor), The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes) became international hits with the first film making more than $100 million worldwide. All three films were based on the hit novels of the same names that together comprise the "Millennium series" by Swedish author/journalist Stieg Larsson.
Read more about this topic: Cinema Of Sweden
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