the 60th Berlinale, in 2010, when the Silver Bear went to Florin Serban's crime drama If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (which was filmed in Swedish co-production), the Best Short Film award also went to a Swedish film - Incident by a Bank, directed by Ruben Östlund



In that same year, Swedish director Thomas Alfredson's excellent fantasy/existential drama Let the Right One In was nominated for the BAFTA award. The same film was also nominated in three categories at the European Film Awards the year previous. The films we mentioned are just the more recent examples indicating the undeniable appeal and potency of the new Swedish film, a European cinematography led by the likes of Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller before the Second World War, by Gustaf Molander and Alf Sjöberg during the war, and, during the post-war resurgence, by Ingmar Bergman, Bo Widerberg, Jan Troell and Vilgot Sjöman. After Bergman's kind of voluntary retirement in the early eighties, during the next two decades the Swedish film, in part undeservedly, lost its prominence. Apart from the early films by Lasse Hallström (currently a bland Hollywood hack), from that period we can single out the series of solid TV crime flicks about inspector Martin Beck, based on the novels by Maj Sjowall and her husband Per Wahloo, followed by, in quality as well as in popularity, the recent TV adaptations of crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell (Inspector Wallander) and Helene Tursten (Irene Huss), which were also published in Croatia. In the late nineties, a new wave of talented Swedish filmmakers emerges, such as Lukas Moodysson, author of the provocative teen drama Show Me Love and the excellent existential drama Together, followed by Lebanese-born Josef Fares, who made a name for himself with comedies Jalla! Jalla! and Kopps, and Iranian-born Reza Parsa, known for his dramas Before the Storm and Marija Blom. Thanks to the new Swedish film retrospective at Tuškanac, local film lovers have the opportunity to gain insight into the works of the less known, but often not less interesting modern Swedish directors.

This year’s Retrospective opens with the excellent award winning documentary Palme by Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander, in part unavoidably hagiographic, but no less intriguing and successful portrait of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister who was assassinated in February 1986. Released as an almost three-hour-long TV documentary and a somewhat shorter theatrical version, the film suggestively and emotionally describes Palme's life, from his youth to his death, not shying away from the more controversial details of his life. Apart from his work in the Swedish Social Democratic Party and his two terms as prime minister, the film also deals with Palme's role in the “IB” scandal, when two journalists of the left-wing magazines Folket and Bild/Kulturfront in May 1973 discovered an officially non-existent secret service, unknown to the members of the Swedish parliament, secretly managed by Palme himself and the Minister for Defence at that time.

Powerful emotions are the basic ingredient of the family drama Simon and the Oaks, directed by Lisa Ohlin, a distinctly poetic and intimate adaptation, characterised by melodramatic passages, of a novel by Marianne Fredriksson, about the coming-of-age of a sensitive boy, Simon Larsson, in Swedish countryside during the Second World War and throughout some ten years after. At the very beginning, we find Simon as a timid and withdrawn boy, who his father Erik believes is not man enough because instead of playing and fighting with his friends and chopping wood, he spends most of his time in the shadow of an old oak, to which he confides his feelings, while perceiving the rustling of its leaves as real music. The reasons for Simon's “difference” start being revealed when he starts school, finding a best friend in his classmate Isak Lentov, a boy from a wealthy Jewish family, when he discovers a passion for music and playing the piano, and when, as the war is about to break out, Isak's family becomes a target for the Nazis. After Erik and Simon's affectionate mother Karin, in agreement with Isak's father Ruben, take the boy under their roof, secrets related to Simon's true lineage start emerging.

An existential drama with elements of fantasy and romance, A One-Way Trip to Antibes, directed by Richard Hobert, is characterised by discrete humour. It is a story about George, a kind-hearted and seemingly a bit demented man who, on his 73rd birthday, finally decides to try to make an old romantic dream come true. While his estranged son Johan and daughter Susanne think of him as a burden they want to get rid of by putting him in a retirement home and making good money by selling his house, George, with the help of an old friend, decides to go on a long journey and finally try to find the mysterious Christine, who sends him touching birthday cards. Along with young Marie, George's housekeeper who always steals things from his house, and who perforce joins him on his journey, he is accompanied by three ghosts who at first seem to portend his impending death. A charming and entertaining road movie, it captivates the viewer not just with emphatic humour and sensibility, but also with minimalistic, but elaborate characterisation and the complex relations between the protagonists, through which we can glimpse the image of a dysfunctional and convincing modern family.

Dysfunctional and complex family relations are also the focus of the romance/comedy drama Simple Simon, co-written and directed by Andreas Öhman, and the existential drama Miss Kicki by Håkon Liu. The first is an atypical, slightly bizarre story about the relationship between two brothers, where the younger, Simon, has Asperger's syndrome, while the older, Sam, conforms to him in every possible way, even by breaking up with his girlfriend, whom he loves, but who doesn't share his unlimited understanding for Simon's outbursts. Using the technique of episodic dramaturgy and leaps in narration, with segments which sometimes repeat themselves literally, and sometimes with slight changes or additions, this film puts the question of how tolerant the viewer himself could be in a similar situation.

Miss Kicki, which won awards at the festivals in Stockholm, Mannheim-Heidelberg and Pusan in 2009, with excellent Pernilla August (Fanny and Alexander) in the title role, is a story saturated with subtle emotions of vulnerability, confusion and existential anxiety, about a middle-aged single mother of a withdrawn teenager Viktor, a woman in need of love and support, who maintains a long distance relationship via Skype with Mr Chang (Eric Tsang from the Infernal Affairs trilogy) from Taipei. When she arrives in Taipei with Viktor (who lives with his grandmother and is as alienated as his mother), wanting to surprise Chang and hoping he would give new meaning to her life, Kicki's dreams and plans shatter, having realised both Chang and she had withheld certain more or less important facts about their lives. At the same time, Viktor, through friendship with a local boy Didi, slowly becomes aware of his own sexuality and the circumstances of his strained relationship with his mother.

Also worthy of attention are the dynamic and very fun crime comedy Sound of Noise (won an award at Cannes 2010), the feature film debut by the director duo Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, and somewhat less ambitious and aimed at a younger audience teen drama A Thousand Times Stronger directed by Peter Schildt, adapted from Christina Herrström's novel of the same name.
(Josip Grozdanić)