Discoveries from Sweden World Cinema

A textile factory is closed in Sweden, hundreds of seamstresses are laid off with few opportunities for new work. However, the employer continues to make profits. Now in Holland, in a newly built factory, with a young, underpaid, female workforce. The film, which was made in 1970, was then a statement against Sweden's accession to the EC. But the pattern is recognizable. Today, it is the women in Korea and India, among others, who sew our clothes.

A hitchhike along a new border in southeastern Armenia becomes a journey within a human landscape. People try to show us the border and share stories of how it affects their lives. They sing about the soil on the other side and mourn what has been lost. This was once an area where people of different groups lived together, but wars and forced migrations have transformed a “we” into “us and them”. The border is very real and impossible to cross. But it is abstract and invisible in the landscape. Where is it? Is it inside us?

Actuality footage of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II during their August 1907 meeting at Swinemünde (today Świnoujście), showing the monarchs coming aboard the German battleship SMS Deutschland and observing naval manoeuvres. A brief record of imperial pageantry in the Baltic, typical of pre-newsreel royal “actualities.”

A mysterious calling from the forest lures a human into a cave, where he is met by the wrath of nature's spirits.

The story of a hunt for a terrifying serial killer who makes paintings of their victims.

Short Film by Carl Slättne.

Oscar Flod is on a stakeout with his partner Blom. They have worked together for many years, but during the stakeout something happens that changes everything. A year later Flod is tasked with investigating a murder. He thinks it's a routine job, but it leads him in unexpected directions.

You don't get any privacy when you live with 3 friends.

A cinematic portrait of a serious and physically strong middle-aged woman, deeply focused on throwing stones in a desert-like landscape. How did she get here? What do the stones symbolize – as alien in the landscape as the woman herself in her black dress? Here you can sense a story about both sadness, integrity and stubbornness, about intersecting paths and about continuing forward without bowing to others. Both the stones and the woman are filmed from a variety of angles, giving the viewer an opportunity to experience the event from different perspectives, and for a moment possibly drop the anthropocentric gaze.

On April 15, 2000, on the day ten years after Greta Garbo's death, a cardboard containing about fifty letters was opened at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, USA. The letters were written by Greta Garbo and addressed to her friend Mercedes de Acosta. She was a playwright and screenwriter. But in Hollywood, she came to be best known for her love affairs, with some of the biggest female stars of the film and theater.

A whale has stranded on a beach and the people go there to watch the spectacle. It becomes a very special afternoon for all involved.

"Forest of Illusions" is a short film about a person who has just moved to his new house where unexplained things take place. A woman appears, who seems to know the place better, and explains that the phenomena originate from the mysterious forest nearby. She describes it as an open door out there. Just a little, but enough for the supernatural phenomena to seep out. The story has elements of magic, strange events and time jumps.

In the countryside, it signifies that spring has arrived when thousands of cranes land to feed and rest on their journey north. This is a brief observation of the people who gather in nature to watch and listen to the birds, and of those who work to keep the nature reserve’s flora and fauna alive.

Doctor Christa arrives at a remote hospital, where Father Julius Glasell cures all his patients with electricity. When Father Glasell winds up saving his sister from a parasite, Christa discovers a terrifying reality: a genuine monster is lurking in the shadows.

In the course of conducting experiments on memory and time during the pandemic, a lovesick scientist with a morbid fear of rejection, makes an unexpected connection.

After ignoring a body in a lake, a runner tries to drown the guilt from her inactions while the truth creeps closer.

It's the first day of summer break, and Ebba and Alice watch the ninth graders celebrating their graduation in the park. Ebba longs for high school and moving to Stockholm, while Alice dreams of boys. When Gurra, Hugo, and Axel arrive, Alice shifts her focus, leaving Ebba to reluctantly join a hangout she did never want. How do you tell your best friend how you really feel?

The story of the new Swedish hit band The Cardigans.

Pictures from the history of the piano and about the manufacture of pianos.

A mindful portrait of the factory worker Ossian Johansson in Gimo (north of Stockholm) who is retiring after a long working life.

A film about the former Swedish colony.

A documentary outlining the history of modern industrial history in Sweden.

Lots of people in the streets and squares of Vimmerby, southern Sweden. Some gesture and play small scenes in front of the camera.

Sara had been in a concentration camp. Ema was a Jewish girl who married Swedish artist Anders Zorn. Ruben suffered from megalomania and was a patient in a mental hospital.

Unemployment in Sweden

A psychiatrist and her husband host a dinner for their neighbors when she notices that someone is observing them from outside, but the others just dismiss her fear as mere exhaustion from overwork.

A documentary following the rock band First Floor Power for a year as they try to make it big.

A film discussing post-independence Namibia from the perspective of the Ovahimba.

A man in a squash hall, two nurses conversing through the tunnels, a couple of guys playing guitar, and in the nail salon, a Ukrainian woman talks about the situation in her homeland. In a visually impactful film, these scenes are juxtaposed, raising questions about context.

The poet Bellman enjoys life in 18th Century Stockholm, while a conspiracy to murder King Gustaf III is taking form.

An animated short film, based on the children's book of the same name by Swedish author Anna Höglund.

Norrland in Sweden while the power plant dams are being built.

The making of Look Sharp!

A visual film about nothing.

Håkan started sniffing paint thinner when he was 13, at 16 he was first arrested, now we get to follow him as he returns to his childhood neighbourhood and no one wants to see him.

The states of minds of two brother's who live in a bleak apartment. The brother's allow themselves to be vulnerable in front of each other. The core of the story is sibling love.

Fated lovers or star-crossed wanderers? Maja has been attracted to her best friend Alice for longer than she can remember, but attraction can only be kept at bay for so long. As undeniable feelings escape into the open world, the inevitable occurs. Follow these auspicious lovers on a journey of self-discovery, romantic affection and tempestuous desire.

In the film Ultramarina, Edefalk has placed paintings and objects in the ocean to show describe the infinite space. (Filmform)

Photographer Nils Petter Löfstedt chronicles his experience during the Gothenburg Riots of 2001 alongside fifteen rolls of film photos.

In this observational documentary, a young woman tries to retain her individuality while living at a treatment center for drug addiction.

At her moving-away party Anna meets her ex-girlfriend Maja. While playing "Spin The Bottle" she has to kiss Maja, which triggers romantic memories from the past relationship that wasn’t as good as the memory makes her believe.

Newly orphaned and freshly wounded from an immense loss, a boy lends his companion a prosthetic arm for the day. The companion would then expose the prosthetic limb to a mélange of textures and materials, whilst documenting the whole process. As the moon inches closer and closer towards the sun, the boy sees something unusual reflected on the water's surface...

Pushy expats in conflict with each other and their environment in an at times hilarious social-anthropological experiment at a sunny, historical paradise in Egypt.

The documentary filmmakers Marta Dauliute and Viktorija Šiaulyte step into the closed-in collective with as much curiosity as much-needed skepticism. Here, capital is synonymous with the individual’s ability, and innovation is the confounding keyword. At the same time, we get to know those who rent a little “pod” that barely offers space for a bed and desk, raising questions about how the entrepreneurial ideology affects us as people. Good Life reflects on a modern phenomenon, where community has become the product of a company, but which at the same time reminds us of other collectives from a completely different time.