Discoveries from Sweden World Cinema

Conversation with the poet out on the island of Runmarö.

At the beginning of time, giants created the mountains and deep forests that surround the small town of Ydre. It’s now one of Sweden’s smallest municipality, and has a population of just a few thousand, which is carefully looked after by the friendly and idealistic mayor. He is ready with gifts and big smiles every time a child is born and he can note that Ydre has a new inhabitant. In the meantime, youths and elderly people are working and living their lives. It’s a cinematic film about responsibility, love for the community and sense of belonging told with an anchored humor about ordinary enlightened moments of everyday on-going life. Creation myths, fables and everyday realism are mixed with understated comedy in an atmospheric and moving film.

At Elbit System's office in Göteborg Emma is worried about a new sickness causing deaths in the weapon industry, but soon her workplace is faced with another direct threat.

Bao Ninh's novel "Krigets sorger/The Sorrows of the War" deals with how the Vietnamese themselves perceived the war. A low-key and desperate picture, far from the heroic self-sacrificing struggle that those in power like to emphasize.

Gustav tells us a little about himself

Naomi is blue-haired, unemployed and meaningless. When she is dumped on her 20th birthday she has had it. She decides to become a masked vigilante who fights "heartbreakers", but she soon learns that love might not be as simple as she first thought.

New Years eve is closing in on a group of young girls locked up behind unbreakable glass windows, enduring a life of meninglessness. A long anticipated fireworks celebration that could break the somberly atmosphere is cancelled at the last minute – a decision that could be life changing for all involved.

Ferdinand the bull was real. And everything was just like in the fairy tale. But the ending was something completely different. Meet the family who cuddled with the friendly bull in the paddock, the grandson of the keeper who accompanied him on the fateful journey to the arena, and the man who actually saw the bullfight in 1936 and has never been able to forget it. They all have their own story. And of course, we meet the beloved bull in a unique newly discovered film.

Northern Finland in the 1930's a worker is shot. The murderer belongs to the counterrevolutionary Lapua Movement. Fascism is spreading across Europe. A time of violence has arrived.

An investigative journalist tracks down an embittered Karlsson-on-the-Roof, who has been banned from flying because he was classified as a heavy drone.

Revisiting a teenage crush on a female teacher, Angelica Ruffier embarks on a delicate journey of memory and desire. A finely woven, reflective essay on past longings and present selves infused with the subtle glamour of French cinema.

Actuality documentary film recording the funeral procession of King Oscar II of Sweden on 19 December 1907. Footage includes public mourning in Stockholm: the katafalk (catafalque), processions of military units and guards, participation of royal family members (including Gustav V, Gustav VI Adolf), and scenes of the city in mourning.

In March 2016, Ruben Östlund's mom asked him to document a flash mob she was going to participate in. The flash mob was organized by the politically independent action group "No to NATO" at the shopping center Nordstan, Gothenburg. Ruben Östlund has said that he finds the commitment to "No to NATO" admirable and important. Especially when noticing the absence of criticism and debate in Swedish media about the neutrality of Sweden and the so-called Host Nation Support Agreement, which was to be approved by the Swedish parliament in April 2016 and come into effect on July 1 the same year, thereby significantly expanding Sweden's NATO cooperation, an opening for full membership in "the increasingly divided military alliance", and in the worst case, the placement of nuclear weapons in Sweden.

Dermot Clemenger from TV4's Let's Dance is charged with 31 counts of buying sex at Thai massage parlors. After fleeing justice to the UK, he is wanted internationally. But the Thai brothels in Örebro continue to operate. TV4 Nyheterna story depicts the women's situation with miserable wages, debts, threats and human trafficking-like conditions.

The film is a testimony of one of the few Hungarians who survived the concentration camps in Germany during the Second World War. Ferenc Göndör's story takes place when he was of school age. As a Jew, he was not allowed to go to school in the same way as his peers. He had to practice pointless and hard work during some lessons. He was not allowed in to his hairdresser, to whom he had been going for many years: "Forbidden to dogs and Jews".

A medallion whose curse consists of unspoken evil, falls into the hands of a young man. What follows is a way towards anger, unsustainable tantrums and bloody murders.

Constructed in 1955 to initially connect Kiruna in Sweden to Altavatn in Norway, the work with the Solitary road was stopped for military reasons. Five small villages had been connected by the road and they were left with a deserted 20 km stretch in the wilderness. Along the road Sami people and finish farmers continue their lives. They still have the road and they have brought really old cars over the ice of Torneträsk so they could drive during summer time. One of the old men that built the road, Sven-Erik Stöckel, writes a letter to the politicians in Kiruna, asking them to finish the road so people do not have to risk their lives getting to the road crossing the dangerous lake of Torneträsk. Will it ever be finished? And what happened to the children that were born as a result of the road workers coming into the wilderness meeting the local girls?

When Bea's date cancels 15 minutes before their date after weeks of planning, Bea has had enough. Bea ask her bff Maria for help, to teach Eduardo a lesson. Unfortunately, things don't go as smoothly as Bea had planned.

Olga stands on the brink of adulthood and is making a five-year plan. She starts studying at the university, but at the same time, the allure of the talent hunt at the local mall, with promises of honor and fame, beckons to her. Balder Ljunggren skillfully depicts an ambitious young person torn between the seemingly endless possibilities of the present.

Simbas childhood is filled with artists and pub dinners together with her rock-’n’-roll dad. The Birch keenly blends different techniques in a playful growing-up story in three acts, about heritage, death, and understanding that something is wrong first when a famous poet points it out.

An unhappy married man who still believes in true love finds himself in a dilemma when he meets a woman in a virtual dating app called RIFT.

Seven outcasts who, despite their special needs, come together in a strange demonstration in a deserted schoolyard. We get to visit the world and rituals they create during bright summer evenings when normal society draws its curtains.

Munir comes from the war in former Yugoslavia and falls in love with Jessica from Örebro. The love story develops into a struggle between two separate worlds.

A collection of short films by Swedish engineer Emil Sieurin.

In duorggat doarggistit, four smallbirches (duorga) are cut by a lake on the tundra.The trees are stifled, and the twigs are taken.The trunks are left behind standing in the landscape.

The eccentric Per Emil Brusewitz influenced both world history and his entire family with his dramatic motorcycle journeys through Revolutionary Russia. When artist Leo Brusewitz follows in the footsteps of his adventurous grandfather, it becomes an animated exploration, lined with spy-stories, comics and contact with spirit worlds, mixed with images from the young Soviet state and thoughts of justice and society.

A wordless comedy about the tribulations of a novice sailor.

Magdalena Andersson has been the Swedish Minister of Finance for five years. In this interview by Katrine Marçal, she comments on feminism, climate awareness, leadership and government finances. Magdalena Andersson is critical of the new type of feminism that is emerging: "Blaming women is not feminism," she says. When it comes to climate awareness, the finance minister thinks that the kind of activism that Greta Thunberg stands for is fantastic. But it is about setting up structures in society, such as systems that disadvantages fuel-consuming cars.

A female figure gives birth to a spiral of toy animals to the sound of music, groans and screams.

A documentary, produced for Swedish television in 1962, which marks the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. It examines both the film A NIGHT TO REMEMBER and Walter Lord’s book of the same name, and features firsthand accounts from three survivors of the tragedy.

The film can be described as an Alice in Wonderland- inspired saga. In the film we meet Josef, a young Afro-Swede in high school who, during a lesson, ends up in a dream world where he travels in time and meets people who contributed to the perception of racism in Sweden. The film addresses the consequences of his journey when racist classmates decide to take revenge as his new-found knowledge is seen a betrayal of the Sweden they know. The film also depicts how ethnic Swedes have been subjected to racism as well as how people in Sweden have worked against racism. The film is unique in addressing the less known parts of Swedish history. The main purpose is to demonstrate that it is possible to stop hate crimes through increased knowledge and that it is up to the individual to stand up for what is right.

Annika talks about her love for horses and her allergy that restricted her ability to ride a horse.

A hundred of Sweden's most radical leftists formed secret Maoist cells in Uppsala and Stockholm in 1968. They called themselves the Rebels. They began to retrain/reform individuals and families to lead Sweden into the Culture revolution. No revolution ever happened, still the rebels managed to shake up both themselves and the entire left movement to a degree that history repressed their existence for almost forty years.

The story of a young girl's struggle to find a peace of mind.

The stubborn firefighter Kajan gives himself a Vasalopp race as a 40th birthday present. With five ski miles under his belt and problems with his car stereo, he heads to Dalarna.

In this intimate portrait, we follow Rena as she makes the transition from youth into adulthood. A journey fraught with limitations and prejudice. She is blind, but her biggest dream is not to be able to see - it is to be seen for who she is.

Tourist film.

Frame Line is a collage film in black and white. Glimpses (both visual and audial) of Stockholm, people, gestures, flags and the Swedish national anthem appear through drawings, paintings and cut-outs. It is a film with an eerie flow between the ugly and the beautiful about returning, about roots and also about reshaping.

Enigmatic short film where a young woman comes to a house and gets to witness a party where names such as Marilyn Monroe, Spinoza and Jack the Ripper are called out among the guests.

Constantly waking up but never awake, Theo finds it hard to differ the reality from his dreams.

A young woman travels back to a location from her childhood only for the long repressed memories to come crawling back to haunt her.

Screwing a ballpoint pen together is no match! No, not one! But screw up 5000 if da'n, 25000 a week, 110000 a month or 1210000 a year! You may be able to do it for five years-possibly 10-then you have chronic, lifelong aches and can no longer wash your Windows or lift your children. You have invested yourself-like hundreds of thousands of other Swedish industrial workers. From the factory Ballograf BIC in Gothenburg.

White men in their 40s reason about life and reveal how difficult it can be to see the privileged seat you are in. Here, satire and seriousness are mixed when documentary sound material meets fictional animated characters.

Swedish music documentary from 2014. Electric Banana Band was formed in 1980 with Lasse Åberg, Klasse Möllberg and Janne Schaffer as front members Trazan, Banarne and Zebran. In the summer of 2014 they made their last tour with concerts at Sweden Rock. The program includes flashbacks to their previous collaborations with the band, newly recorded interviews with several of the band members and lots of fun songs such as "Min Piraja Maja", "Kameleont" and "Zwampen".

Three stories about people at emotional moments in their lifes.

A surrealistic and symbolic depiction of the liberation of the self in a series of associative scenes. The main character moves between different rooms, rooms of significance for him, dragging something that constantly changes form but eventually turns out to be himself. It is an old and consumed I that disappears from him.

Short animated silent film about a man drinking alcohol.