Swedish films at festivals
Swedish films are travelling the world on festivals and markets. Here you find the latest news on where and when. Enjoy!
Swedish films at TIFF (September 5 – 15)
© Hannes Krantz
World Premiere in Centrepiece – The Swedish Torpedo
Summer of 1939. The outbreak of war in Europe is drawing ever closer, but Sally Bauer, a 30-year-old single mother, can’t tear herself away from the sea and her longing to swim the English Channel. To achieve her dream she must defy her family, society's expectations, and risk losing her young son.
Directed by Frida Kempff
Produced by Momento Film / Erik Andersson, David Herdies and Michael Krotkiewski, with funding from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales Urban Sales
© PINE
World Premiere in Short Cuts – Deck 5B
We meet a mother full of desire, on the parking deck of a ferry she is forced to make a choice between her parental duty and the love she’s been waiting for.
Directed by Malin Ingrid Johansson
Produced by Pine / Joel Rostmark, Adam Holmström Meinking, Andrea Gyllenskiöld, with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales TBA
© Marcus Dineen
World Premiere in Short Cuts – Fuck Me
A film about gender norms, power and femininity. It's about how hard it is to stop playing a role you’ve spent all your life learning.
Directed by Anette Sidor
Produced by Verket Produktion / Frida Mårtensson, Lova Lilliemarck, with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales Kurzfilm Sales
© Miso Film Sweden AB
World Premiere in Primetime – Faithless
Acclaimed Swedish director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) helms this simmering adaptation of Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman’s classic about infidelity and the emotional wreckage created in its wake.
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Produced by Miso Film Sweden AB, SVT
Sales Fremantle
Swedish Co-Productions at TIFF
© Felix Dickinson
Canadian Premiere in Special Presentations – The End (DK, DE, IE, UK, SE)
A wealthy family survives in a palatial bunker, two decades after the end of the world to which they contributed through their involvement in the oil industry.
Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer
Swedish co-producer Anagram Sverige / Martin Persson och Ann Lundberg, with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales The Match Factory
© Łukasz Bąk
North American Premiere in Special Presentations – The Girl with the Needle (DK, PO, SE)
Karoline a young factory worker, finds herself abandoned and pregnant while striving to climb out of poverty in post WW1 Copenhagen. Amidst her struggles, she meets Dagmar a charismatic woman running a secret adoption agency within a candy store, helping poor mothers find foster homes for their unwanted children. A strong connection is formed between the two women, but Karoline’s world shatters as she stumbles upon the dreadful revelation of the nightmarish fate she unknowingly embraces.
Directed by Magnus von Horn
Swedish Co-producer Madeleine Ekman / Nordisk Film Sverige, Film i Väst, with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales The Match Factory
© Paradox/SF Studios
International Premiere in Special Presentations – Quisling - The Final Days (NO, SE)
A priest seeks a measure of contrition from one of the Second World War’s most infamous traitors in this bold and bracing historical drama by Norway’s Erik Poppe.
Directed by Erik Poppe
Swedish Co-producer Film i Väst, SF Studios
Sales REinvent
© Henrik Ohsten
World Premiere in Discovery – The Quiet Ones (DK, SE, FR)
In 2008, a group of men from Denmark and across Europe pull off the biggest heist of all time on Danish soil. Kasper, a boxer with few chances left in life, is offered the opportunity to plan the robbery by its foreign initiators. At the risk of losing his family and everything that matters to him he takes on the challenge in a bid to break all records and secure his place in the history books.
Directed by Frederik Louis Hviid
Swedish Co-producer Lizette Jonjic / Zentropa Sweden, Film i Väst, with support from The Swedish Film Institute
Sales TrustNordisk
© Compass Films
Short Cuts - O (IS, SE)
O is a humanistic and poetic story of a fragile man trying to achieve a simple task where his main obstacle is within himself.
Directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson
Swedish co-producer [sic] film / Siri Hjorton Wagner, SVT, Film i Väst with support from Swedish Film Institute.
Sales The Party Film Sales
Swedish films in Venice (August 28 – September 7)
© SVT
World Premiere in Official Selection – Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958–1989
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 is the definitive cinematic account of the background to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through unique and immersive footage, for long buried in the vaults of the Swedish Television archives. Four years in the making, this film unfortunately has become heartbreakingly timely. From the director of The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 and Concerning Violence.
Directed by Göran Hugo Olsson
Produced by Story / Tobias Janson with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales Urban Sales
Swedish Co-Productions in Venice
© Moon Man
World Premiere in Official Selection – Songs of Slow Burning Earth (UA, DE, SE, FR)
An audiovisual diary of Ukraine’s immersion into the abyss of the first two years of Russia's full invasion, made up of places, occasional characters, rare dialogues, intraframe sounds and silences which, when put together, capture the chronology of how the war became normalised. Against the backdrop of this (meta)physical landscape of collective disaster, a new generation of Ukrainians aspires to imagine the future.
Directed by Olha Zhurba
Swedish Co-producer We Have a Plan / Kerstin Übelacker, Film i Skåne, with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales Filmotor
© Per Arnesen
World Premiere in Official Selection – Families Like Ours / ep 1-7 (DK, FR, SE, CZ, BE, NO, DE)
Countries disappear, love remains. In a not-too-distant future, Denmark faces total evacuation due to rising water levels. As the nation prepares to leave their homes, high school student Laura must choose between her divorced parents and the boy she’s fallen in love with.
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
Swedish co-producer Film i Väst
Sales StudioCanal
© Les films du Worso
World Premiere in Orizzonti – Quiet Life (FR, DE, SE, GR, ES, FI)
Sergei and Natalia are political asylum-seekers who fled to Sweden with their two daughters, hoping for a new life. When their application is rejected, their youngest daughter, traumatised, falls into a coma, a condition known as apathy.
Directed by Alexandros Avranas
Swedish Co-producer Fox in the Snow / Olivier Guerpillon, Frida Hallberg, Film i Väst, with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales Elle Driver
© Compass Films
World Premiere in Orizzonti Corti – O (IS, SE)
O is a humanistic and poetic story of a fragile man trying to achieve a simple task where his main obstacle is within himself.
Directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson
Swedish co-producer [sic] film / Siri Hjorton Wagner, SVT, Film i Väst with support from Swedish Film Institute
Sales The Party Film Sales
World Premiere in Giornate degli Autori - Basileia (IT, SE, DK)
In the rugged, fog-shrouded mountains of Aspromonte, Italy, an archaeologist and his assistants are seeking an ancient treasure. But their digs release mysterious mythological creatures who will change the lives of the inhabitants of this remote village forever.
Directed by Isabella Torre
Swedish co-producer Film i Väst
Sales Luxbox
© Horopter Film Production
World Premiere in Giornate degli Autori – Possibility of Paradise (RS, SE)
Schoolkids living on the top of the paradise island wait for the rain to stop. A former advertising executive is closing a land deal for her new villa. An entrepreneur battles nature while building a resort in the jungle. A veterinarian works cleaning snakes from the gardens of the foreigners.
Directed by Mladen Kovačević
Swedish co-producer MDEMC Produktion / Elin Lilleman Eriksson, with support from the Swedish Film Institute
Sales Taskovski Films Sales
Read more:
Official festival site:
Venice International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
Published 14 April 2021