Discoveries from Sweden World Cinema

A journey through different youth cultures and their relationship to different forms of substance abuse.

In a small village there are two doctors - one professional and one quack. Dr. Bergman has to see the number of his patients dwindle, as they seem to prefer the traditional medication of the quack doctor, Rasmus Thomsen. Rasmus' son Erik graduates from medical school and returns to the village. While Rasmus and Dr. Bergman become enemies, Erik falls in love with Dr. Bergman's daughter Birgit.

A young girl tries to keep her "gama-gutchi" alive while her father is in a coma, at risk of becoming a vegetable. Unaware of the implications, she creates inner images that come to life in the animation, in a touching film about the magical thinking of children.

"Art" - A different kind of Art film. One that takes the liberty to amplify and invent freely along the basis of reality. A film that speaks for the artist.

Hasse Ekman speaks about his career, films, colleagues, inspirations and role models.

"Our Lord goes on vacation" - Mr. Schwartz and Mr. White looks like ordinary people but are actually supernaturals. Schwartz is emitted by the Devil to spread evil among the people and the White of God to spread goodness.

Cavalry captain von Stahl is in love with dancer Marianne Rizetskis, but when he suddenly finds himself completely destitute he takes off to South America, leaving Marianne heartbroken. Arriving im America, von Stahl finds work at the estate of a man wanted by the local government, and gets romantically involved with his daughter Soledad. When Marianne arrives as well, von Stahl finds himself torn between the two women.

A portrait of the Swedish singer and lyricist Alf Robertson. The working boy from Gamlestan who, with his unique voice and pen, managed to capture the ordinary and melancholy everyday life in Sweden in the 1970s and 80s. The film tells about Alf's upbringing in Gothenburg, life at sea, the years in Nashville and the enormous record successes of the 80s. But also about the illnesses and difficulties he struggled with during the end of his life.

Birgitta Dahl was involved in pushing through several of the gender equality reforms that we take for granted today: day care for all, general parental insurance, a ban on hitting children and a ban on rape within marriage.

A documentary filmmaker in moral distress ponders her own role and how close she should get. Is she a real filmmaker if she doesn’t always take that leap?

A couple of young friends are going to a party when things start to go wrong.

A film about the youth prison in Uppsala, which focuses on one intern's alienation and anxiety.

Dennis gets offended when his friend takes the last sausage without asking. This creates a strong inner conflict in him that almost ruins their relationship.

Shams and Stella are in love and the relationship sprouts. But Shams has not told Stella that she is paperless and seeking asylum.

In her room 15 year old "Hannah" decides to start selling sex. She puts up an ad and offers her services as an escort. In her diary Hanna describes how she, over the course of an autumn sells sex in Stockholm. Hanna's first sex buyers ask no questions about her age, which is often enough to avoid being convicted of buying sex from children, claiming that it was thought that the girl was older. As the majority of sex buyers can get away with fines, police prioritize other crimes. The documentary "En eskortflickas dagbok" gives insight into a chaotic world.

Micki has run the store "Dirty Records" for over 40 years. He will soon end his life's work, and is looking back at how it all started.

Tomten och Bocken - rider igen is a Christmas show with the radar couple Måns Zelmerlöw and Per Andersson. Here we get to experience a magnificent show with Christmas brilliance.

In "Mission Åsa-Nisse" filmmaker Anders Nordqvist explores the 60th anniversary film classic series Åsa-Nisse. Through old film clips, meetings with actors and artists and visits to filming locations - which are mostly located in a Stockholm suburb - we get a new perspective on Swedish film's quantitatively largest character.

The film will take place at a HVB home for young girls. It will be filmed in early 2026.

A short film about women who is comfortable in their role as victims.

Pastor Elias is preparing a sermon for when the bishop is coming by his church.

Documentary about the two of the greatest Swedish artists of the 19th century, Ernst Josefson and Carl Fredrik Hill, and how their lives were changed by mental illness.

Friday is disco-day. But everything will not go as planned. The girl you just met disappears when your friends are about to move on. And too much booze adds to regrets and angst in the abandoned suburb.

A young woman steals a taxi when the driver is helping a passenger into a house. When she stops at a hot dog stand, the taxi is hijacked by a gunman.

In 2056, a scientist will receive the risky task of resuming the excavations of the Meyeratelies in 2056.

Mother-in law comes to visit, which means mayhem at home....

Seven-year-old Polina and her 13-year-old sister Nastia live and breathe ballet. Both of them are studying at the Boris Eifman Dance Academy in frigid Saint Petersburg. They’re currently awaiting their grades to find out if they’ve done well enough to be promoted to the next year, with Nastia lovingly guiding he little sister through the process. But in the meantime, Nastia also has to deal with the high demands that the academy places on its students. The gorgeously styled shots are sometimes calm, even clinical, and sometimes warm, lively and funny.

Slipper hero Ernst Rolf is married to a real Xantippa and also has concerns with the economy, so when the superintendent is shirking his home. In town, he meets his friend Boman and accompanies him to the Opera Terrace. There, he laments that the sweet woman he once married has turned into a bitch. He fantasizes about other women (who dances in his mind in trick photography on the terrace table). Boman decides to help him by writing a letter, in which Rolf called to a meeting in Jönköping. The idea is to Rolf with this pretext to escape from home and be able to amuse themselves on Hasselbackens masquerade next evening.

Gösta Werner makes an unsentimental trip back to his old student city. gauging it's past and it's future.

Malkon is sent to the dentist while his parents are reindeer-scoring in Jukkasjärvi. The strange dentist does not behave as a dentist usually does, not at all.

Aspiring youtuber Vendela decides to get up infront of her high school class and show a disturbing video that disrupts the lesson and causes her teacher Lukas to fear for her life. Get Ready With Me is a refreshingly unpredictable thriller about generational power struggles that combines grim satire with the current urgencies of teen angst, social media and fame.

Fragments of thoughts and associations, expressions of emotion in a film-poetic work where text, sound, animations, and images collaborate to create a beautiful and atmospheric whole.

First Swedish puppet film. A witch offers a soldier a wealthy life if he retrieves a tinderbox from a hollow tree.

A woman is trying to buy menstrual pads and the clerk won't leave her alone.

A short philosophical reflection about receiving a fatal medical diagnosis in springtime when the power of nature is as strongest. It is a surreal state and all beauty and happiness is in contrast to the bleakness of the situation. Abruptly confronted by the question what is truly important the turmoil is within...Wordless. Life becomes painfully clear and the strongest feeling of all is that we have each other now, not tomorrow. There may never be a tomorrow.

"Apricots" (Aprikoser) is an animated children film about a boy that spends the day at the seaside with his uncle. During the adventurous games he learns the power of nature.

A document of life and culture in the southern Swedish university town, Lund.

A documentary about Anita Lindblom, the big star of the 60s and 70s who left Sweden behind and settled in France. When a moving company destroyed her furniture she stopped singing and devoted her life to fighting them in various courts.

A lonely scientist finally makes contact with extraterrestrial life and eagerly awaits their arrival, dreaming of joining them.

A Berlinale nominated short animated feature.

"Extraneous" - It has been funeral. The elderly couple, Emma and David, pamper their deceased friend. After the funeral, they invite the guests for a drink and a little nostalgic conversation about what has been. When the guest are getting ready to leave, two men remain.

A portrait of Maggie, through Swedish everyday life. Maggie always co-ordinates high heels with a beret, and she loves gold. She lives on the 15th floor in one of Malmö’s suburbs. Her balcony is littered with reminders of her previous life. Under a golf bag, next to a racing ticket from 1999, are the remains of a pigeon that she killed when she couldn’t sleep.

A unique glimpse into Håkan Hellström’s world, both as a person and as an icon. Told through his perspective and that of a devoted fan, it explores media frenzy, idol culture, and myth-making, while capturing the shared desire of artists and fans to be seen and to belong.

"Meat and Love" - Tells the story how Finnish human outcast are being exported to Sweden as a sausages. The local butcher falls in love with the fragile owner of the health food store. He begins to date her. It turns out to be inappropriate. The health food customers becomes uneasy. They mobilize their strong hatred against the cornea butcher. An intrusive and discolored drama. About cross-over lust, hunger and fears. Recording from the stage production.

Calle Parking has invented a car that can be folded to the size of a suitcase. To remedy the parking problems in Stockholm. Presenting his idea to the authorities causes a conflict of interest.

A little girl doesn't want to eat and her nagging mother tries to persuade her by claiming that "you've got your mouth to eat with". The girl doesn't believe her and heads out into the world to find out for herself how things are with mouths.

A bus driver is accused by a passenger of being tired and nodding off at the wheel. Worry spreads and the situation becomes increasingly charged in a surefire everyday drama about group dynamics and about being questioned in your professional service.

Tailor Vipperup in Ebberöd has problems with liquidity: customers are bad at paying for his services while his own creditors are all the more intrusive. His consolation in life consists of his daughter Ellen and the faithful companion Tadeus. However, the repulsive trader Klemmensen, the town's richest man and most ruthless usurer, casts more and more lustful glances at Ellen.

A dark Saturday night in Skellefteå. A mother of four offers all girls in the streets a free ride in her private car.

Interbeing is based on documentation of social structures and their different approaches to trust and fear. The material is presented through a thermal camera, the optics of which do not register what is visible to the eye but render shades of temperature; a perspective granting all living beings the same conditions of representation.

A writer and his girlfriend are attacked by a homicidal madman.

The ex pro boxer Knuttis Svensson suspects that his wife has a secret admirer.

Swedish film about a man whose only purpose in life is to do strange things. If something isn't strange, he won't do it. One day he meets Helen, and falls in love. This puts him in a dilemma, since love isn't strange at all... Or is it? This film has everything... Loafs of bread, tooth brushes, keys, hats, a lawyer in a boat, some other people in another boat, a strangely painted cup, plastic animals in a train, real animals of various kinds, socks in the wild, the horizon, a big crazy fish (not real though), an incredible amount of whipped cream, a lamp post in love and some other stuff that you might have been waiting for.

A cultural-historical portrait of the renowned and enigmatic architect Sigurd Lewerentz, who rarely allowed himself to be captured on film.

Award-winning filmmakers Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck turn their lens on us once more—chronicling the impact of Camera Obscura, the advent of the personal phone camera, and the explosion of social media communication upon society’s concepts of self and images.

Inga starts working as a trainee at Skå Barnby at Färingsö outside Stockholm. There she gets acquainted with people living nearby. Soon disturbances and conflicts arise between them.

When all other countries went into lockdown, the Swedish politicians and experts decided that Sweden would remain a more open society. The Swedish model for fighting Covid-19 in recent years has been discussed across the entire world, and its main figures have been the object of both hate campaigns and personality cults. Documentary filmmaker Viktor Nordenskiöld’s camera has followed the front figures of the crisis at conferences and everyday places. The result is a highly interested insight into the processes that have laid at the foundation of the controversial Swedish strategy, and how the medial and political pressure affected the decision-makers.