The Cinephile´s Guide to Swedish Movies

TEXT JAKOB ReichMANN ILLUSTRATION cARl JÄRMYR eRiKSSON

wintertime can be quite depressing, especially if you live in a country where darkness takes the sun hostage in early October and doesn’t let it go until the end of March. Besides the usual complaints, the advantages of this time of the year seem clear: months of time to listen to some trending podcasts, cope with one’s unrealistic New Year's resolutions and finally catch up with the IMDB watchlist created years ago. While Swedish films may not be on your radar yet, this guide should help you to explore the rich and diverse range of movies created in the country pioneering in Scandinavian cinematography.

persona: ingmar Bergman

There is a square, a museum and even a piece of a Swedish island dedicated to his honor. Ingmar Bergman, a filmmaking icon and one of the most influential directors of the 20th century. One of his masterpieces, “Persona”, is a movie which devours you, keeps you under his spell, and suffuses you with a mix of fascination, confusion and disbelief. Dream and reality merge with each other, after the nurse Alma joins the patient of a psychiatric institution and former actress Elisabeth Vogler on the isolated island of Fårö. In the middle of her last performance she stopped talking and stayed silent ever since. Slowly, the tension between them increases until the red thread of the movie literally breaks apart. And as the difference in the women’s personalities blurs, the spectator gets captured by an 84-minute delirium which you wish would never end.

A pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence: Roy Andersson

“I am glad that you are doing fine,” the characters say when, obviously, the opposite is true. Zombie-like characters and the still-standing camera are trademarks of the Swedish movie maker Roy Andersson. Following the two recurring protagonists, Jonathan and Sam, who unsuccessfully try to sell novelty items, we experience that although the characters find themselves in groups, they deliberately isolate themselves. Lacking in empathy, they don’t realize what is happening right in front of them and thus are damned to be stuck with their solitude. While Andersson’s sense of humor admittedly seems morbid in the beginning, the concatenated scenes unfold into a variety of hilarious and entertaining situations which makes the movie a perfect tip for a cold and dreary winter night.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Nils Arden Oplev

Based on the first book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, this movie has all the characteristics of a typical thriller. A mysterious landscape on a secluded island in the far north of Sweden, the investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) who became an outcast and was convicted for libel against a Swedish tycoon, a girl who has been lost for 40 years and a list of secretive suspects. After the girl’s uncle, Henrik Wanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), hired Mikael to finally investigate the case of his beloved niece, he stumbles upon a young woman who has been spying on his computer for months. That is when he finally comes across his 24-year-old prospective partner Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a genius computer hacker with body piercings and (dragon) tattoos all over her body. With an intense dedication, rooted in her own past of abuse, she helps Mikael solve the almost forgotten bizarre murder cases. All in all, the mysterious setting, the brilliant and non-conformist protagonist and the dark and gruesome murder cases add up to an uncommon and compelling thriller definitely worth watching.