Swedish films about hope

The 1992 Danish football team competes for the European Championship.

Two South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock 'n' roller, Rodriguez. The film won Best Documentary at the 85th Academy Awards.

After getting fired from his current job as a pilot and dumped by his current wife, he seeks to find a new job. Out of desperation on the job market he disguises himself as a woman in order to get a job from Silver, a company seeking a female pilot. The lines between his female and male life as well as his personal and love life starts to become a blur which he eventually cannot handle.

Agnes has most things in life: a family who are always there for her, a good job in the restaurant industry, a boyfriend who loves her, and a best friend whom she knows inside out. Or does she? All of a sudden things begin to crumble, one by one, and soon nothing is as it was.

This is a story about two homeless brothers (Zana, 7) and (Dana, 10) who live on the edge of survival. In the beginning of the story they catch a glimpse of Superman through a hole in the wall at the local cinema. Zana and Dana decide that they want to go to America and live with Superman. Once they get there he can solve all their problems, make their lives easy and punish everyone that has been mean to them. Zana, the younger brother, starts to make a list of all people he is going to tell Superman to punish. On top of the list is Saddam Hussein. Dana on the other hand makes a concrete plan for what they need to get there; money, passports, transportation and a way to get across the boarder. Unfortunately they have neither of those. But in spite of everything they decide to follow the dream. Written by Karzan Kader

Life coach Sven travels to Thailand to fulfil his dreams as a writer. He meets Gitte a yoga-practising free spirit from Norway. Then along comes Anja, an editor who works for a Swedish publisher. What does he really want to do with his life, and who does he want to do it with?

For Sebastian Silverberg life is all about his appearance, partying and his enormous ego. Things are going smoothly when an accident leaves him blind, forcing him to re-evaluate his life and to seek meaning beyond appearances.

When Astrid Lindgren was very young something happened that affected her profoundly, and this combination of both miracle and calamity came to shape her entire life. It was an event that transformed her into one of the most inspiring women of our age and the storyteller a whole world would come to love. This is the story of when a young Astrid, despite the expectations of her time and religious upbringing, decided to break free from society's norms and follow her heart.

In her quest to uncover the wrongdoings of the Russian authorities, Anna Politkovskaya inspired awe in some and fear in countless others. At age 48 she was assassinated for simply doing her job. This documentary is based on Anna's conversations with filmmaker Marina Goldovskaya, Anna's former university professor and personal friend. Shot over a period of 20 years, this exclusive footage creates an incredible story of a woman who consciously gave her life for her convictions.

A man moves his two daughters to Italy after their mother dies in a car accident, in order to revitalize their lives. Genoa changes all three of them as the youngest daughter starts to see the ghost of her mother, while the older one discovers her sexuality.

In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the owners of the farm. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.

Erika is mentally bruised and starts group therapy with people seeking absolute anonymity.

The story of a lone father's relationship with his daughter, of the destructive power of alcohol, of a child's vulnerability, but also of love, betrayal and socialist politics in 1970s Sweden. A unique and moving story freely based on Åsa Linderborg's best-selling novel.

In a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria, wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life.

Thirteen year-old Nils Holgersson is bored dwelling on a farm with his parents. Instead of helping on the farm, he prefers to play pranks and tease animals. One day life unexpectedly changed Nils...

Three days in the life of fitness motivator Sylwia Zając, whose presence on social media has made her a celebrity. Although she has hundreds of thousands of followers, is surrounded by loyal employees and admired by acquaintances, she is looking for true intimacy.

After a young woman and her parents are murdered by a killer determined to wipe out the entire family, Detective Inspector Joona Linna works with a psychiatrist to hypnotize the son who narrowly escaped death in order to find the one surviving daughter before the murderer does.

Just as Stella enters the exciting world of adolescence she discovers that her big sister and role model Katja is hiding an eating disorder. The disease slowly tears the family apart. A story about jealousy, love and betrayal told with warmth, depth and laughter - on and off the ice.

Erik, a lecturer in architecture, inherits his father’s large old house in Hellerup, north of Copenhagen. His wife Anna, a well-known television newscaster, suggests that they invite their friends to come and live with them. In this way she hopes to evade the boredom that has begun to seep into their marriage. Before long, a dozen women, men and children move into the country house, make collective decisions, engage in discussions and go swimming together in the nearby Øresund strait. They also rub each other up the wrong way on account of their smaller and larger idiosyncrasies. Their fragile equilibrium threatens to come undone when Erik falls in love with his student Emma and the young woman moves into the house. Fourteen-year-old Freja, daughter of Erik and Anna, aloofly observes these goings-on and seeks her own way.

Hawaii, Oslo is the story of a handful of people who cross each other's path without necessarily knowing each other, during the hottest day of the year, in Oslo. We follow Frode and Milla. They are having their first child, who they are told will not live long. We follow Bobbie-Pop, a faded singer who tries to commit suicide. We follow Leon, an institutionalized kleptomaniac who is loking for Åsa, to whom he has a ten year old deal to get married. We meet Leon's brother, Trygve, who fetches Leon at the institution to celebrate his birthday, but who himself has plans to use his leave from prison to run away. And most of all we meet the angel Vidar, Leon's best buddy at the institution, who sees things no one else can see, and who may be able to save everyone - except himself?

One day in the life of Anders, a young recovering drug addict, who takes a brief leave from his treatment center to interview for a job and catch up with old friends in Oslo.

Despite grumpy 59 year-old Ove being deposed as president of his condominium association, but he keeps looking over the neighbourhood with an iron fist. When pregnant Parvaneh and her family move into the terraced house opposite Ove and she accidentally back into Ove’s mailbox, it sets off a series of unexpected changes in his life.

An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.

Inspired by “One Thousand and One Nights,” the celebrated collection of Middle Eastern and Indian folk tales, “About Endlessness,” in its juxtaposition of tableaux capturing moments in life, explores the preciousness and beauty of our existence, awakening in us the wish to maintain this eternal treasure and pass it on.

It's a beautiful day in Slottsskogen, Gothenburg idyllic city park, when suddenly the unthinkable happens - gunfire amidst all people. Two gangsters shooting game against each other and a large police operation starts. The conflict grows rapidly to involve several gangs from Gothenburg underworld. GSI switched to try to identify a new thread which proves to be both larger and better armed than any other. The only clue is a tattoo on one of the killed gang members.

Swedish account of Raoul Wallenberg, the man responsible for the largest rescue of Jews during World War II.

Stockholm, late 1970s. Within a stone’s throw of government buildings and juvenile homes lies the seductive world of sex clubs, discotheques and private residences. Call Girl tells the story of how young Iris is recruited from the bottom of society into a ruthless world where power can get you anything.

The lives of six people, who seem to have nothing more in common than their faraway homelands, become inextricably linked in Amsterdam, the city they have chosen as their new home.

Mikko Virtanen feels like a Swedish soul trapped in a Finnish body. Full of disgust for everything Finnish, he sees Sweden as heaven. Upon meeting a suicidal Swedish psychologist Mikael Anderson, he seizes an opportunity for an identity switch. Raspberry Boat Refugee is a comedy about cultural differences in the Nordic countries, their nationalism and, not least, prejudices about our neighbours. It also proves how futile it is to try to escape oneself.

A Swedish immigrant family struggles to adapt to their new life on the American frontier during the second half of the 19th century amidst civil war, native uprising and the lure of gold in California.

A film between fiction and reality, highlighting questions about group dynamics and established hierarchies. A group of people meet for their high school reunion 20 years later. One of them talks about her being bullied and outcast and soon the former classmates fall back to the roles they used to have back in school. But this is just half of the film.

Two competitive friends, fueled by literary aspirations and youthful exuberance, endure the pangs of love, depression and burgeoning careers.

In 1890, Pontus, the starving writer, wanders the streets of Christiania, in search of love and a chance to get his work published. All he meets is defeat and suffering while his sense of reality is withering. One moment he is delighted and the next he curses everybody. All the time he manages to maintain human dignity and pride.

Four small gangsters from Copenhagen trick a gangster boss: they take over 4,000,000 kroner which they were supposed to bring him. Trying to escape to Barcelona they are forced to stop in the countryside, in an old, wrecked house, hiding there for several weeks. Slowly, one after another, they realize, that they would like to stay there, start a new life.

A comedy about the new alternative family and how different family situations and relationships come to a head during the premier family weekend.

When a border guard with a sixth sense for identifying smugglers encounters the first person she cannot prove is guilty, she is forced to confront terrifying revelations about herself and humankind.

Knut Hamsun is Norway's most famous and admired author. Ever since he was young he has hated the English for the starvation they caused Norway during WWI. When the Germans occupy Norway 9 April 1940 he welcomes them and the protection they can give from Great Britain. He supports the national socialist ideals, but opposes the way these ideals are turned into action - that Norwegians are jailed and executed. His wife Marie travels in Germany during the war as a sign of support from Knut and herself.

The movie is a sequel to Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973), where we revisit the characters of Johan and Marianne, then a married couple. After their divorce, Johan and Marianne haven't seen each other for 32 years. Marianne is still working, as a divorce lawyer. Johan is quite well off and has retired to a house in the Orsa finnmark district of Sweden. On a whim, Marianne decides to visit him. Johan's son from a previous marriage, Henrik, lives nearby in a cottage with his daughter Karin, a gifted cello player. The relationship between father and son is strained. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.

The Interrogator Erik Backstrom is forced to return to his former home village to solve a murder mystery, in which the local polices and some hunters and even Erik's family seems to be involved. Soon, the conflicts are in full action, especially between Erik and the local police Torsten. Torsten does not support Erik very much in his job and has, for some personal reasons, already arrested a suspected perpetrator. Eric takes great risks when he starts digging in the criminal material of the horrible murder case.

A tone-deaf cop works to track down a group of guerilla percussionists whose anarchic public performances are terrorizing the city.

The true story about legendary explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his epic crossing of the Pacific on a balsa wood raft in 1947, in an effort to prove it was possible for South Americans to settle in Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.

On a foggy day, Julia's six-year-old son Jens is called missing. Despite a thorough search, the boy is never found. Twenty years later, Julia’s father receives one of the shoes Jens was wearing the day he disappeared. Who sent it? Why? Is the boy still alive? This inexplicable act suddenly awakens a hope in Julia that she might see her son again… or that she could find his body and murderer. As she returns to her father’s island, she hears stories of the mythical Nils Kant – a murderer who once was the terror of the island. He is dead and buried for years, long before Julia’s son disappeared. But Julia’s father uncovers that his death and burial were only a fake. While on his tracks, Julia accepts the help and love of Lennart, a local police inspector. His dark and mysterious past brings him a lot closer to Jens’s disappearance that she might think…

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out that her mentally impaired daughter, Helena, is out of the asylum and living with Eva.

A portrait of the brilliant, extravagant Kristina of Sweden, queen from age six, who fights the conservative forces that are against her ideas to modernize Sweden and who have no tolerance for her awakening sexuality.

A three-tiered story centered around drugs and organized crime, and focused on a young man who becomes a runner for a coke dealer.

In a small mining community in Northern Sweden, a group of youngsters about to take the leap in the adult age fight with themselves and the world around, while the ground literally trembles under their feet.

A young Eastern European immigrant working in Sweden is faced with a painful choice when she's laid off from her factory in the name of "efficiencies."