Swedish films about society

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.

The 1992 Danish football team competes for the European Championship.

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.

When Sebastian meets Andreas for the first time, he knows they belong together. While Sebastian defies gender norms — flouting convention in his androgynous fluidity — straight-identifying Andreas becomes unable to accept his attraction to another man, as their relationship progresses. Struggling with his identity, Sebastian becomes increasingly determined to become “Ellie,” even if it means walking away from Andreas. Something Must Break brims with raw electricity as it explores questions of gender and sexuality with refreshing candor.

Sinan is passionate about literature and has always wanted to be a writer. Returning to the village where he was born, he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, but his father’s debts catch up with him.

When her father is killed in a road accident, Trishna's family expect her to provide for them. The rich son of an entrepreneur starts to restlessly pursue her affections, but are his intentions as pure as they seem?

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

Dr. Jean Markham returns to the town she left as a teenager to take over her late father's medical practice. When a school-yard scuffle lands Charlie in her surgery, she invites him to visit the hives in her garden and tell his secrets to the bees, as she once did. The new friendship between the boy and the bee keeper brings his mother Lydia into Jean's world.

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.

A teenager's quest to launch Norwegian Black Metal in Oslo in the 1990s results in a very violent outcome.

Detectives and best friends Andreas and Simon lead vastly different lives; Andreas has settled down with his beautiful wife and son; while Simon, recently divorced, spends most of his waking hours getting drunk at the local strip club. But all that changes when the two of them are called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple, caught in a vicious cycle of violence and drugs. It all looks very routine – until Andreas finds the couple's infant son, crying in a closet. The usually collected policeman finds himself confronted with his own powerlessness and is shaken to his core. As Andreas slowly loses his grip on justice, it suddenly becomes up to the unruly Simon to restore the balance between right and wrong.

Monika from Stockholm falls in love with Harry, a young man on holiday. When she becomes pregnant they are forced into a marriage, which begins to fall apart soon after they take up residence in a cramped little flat.

Aymas, the 55-year-old protagonist of the film, has seen a lot in his life. A lawyer from Germany brings along bitter news that Aymas's only daughter has passed away and left her fortune to his father. Aimlessly ,Aymas wanders along the streets of the town which is constantly filled with fog. Fog lies both in the streets and in Aymas's brains. The fog can only be dispelled by wind or a girl named Samal, whom Aymas accidentally meets in the fog. If fact, the word samal means 'wind' in Central Asia. The girl is really like the wind - she's wayward, impulsive and unpredictable. She behaves exactly like she pleases. She scatters foundations. She's in love with another girl and she's very unhappy. To Aymas, Samal reminds of his daughter. For her sake, Aymas delves into a series of adventures with unpredictable consequences. It seems to him that they're getting closer to each other. But how can you can get closer to the wind and lock it into a cage?

A group of friends travels to Sweden to visit the rural hometown of one of them and attend its mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly descends into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

A ship carrying settlers to a new home on Mars after Earth is rendered uninhabitable is knocked off-course, causing the passengers to consider their place in the universe.

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."

Rebecka Martinsson from Kiruna has not really found herself despite her big successes at a law firm in Stockholm. When a friend from her childhood passes away, Rebecka returns to Kiruna where she's drawn into a thrilling hunt for a killer.

A 14-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother, in Finnish master Pirjo Honkasalo’s gorgeously stylized and emotionally devastating work about what we pass on to younger generations, and the ways we do it.

During the last two years of her life, Princess Diana campaigns against the use of land mines and has a secret love affair with a Pakistani heart surgeon.

The last summer the five boys are together in Falkenberg. They are now grown up to be young men, on their way out into the world. At least most of them.

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.

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.

In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008. The thieves used an elaborate scheme called the 'little brother number' or 'brother trick', involving advanced role-play and gang rhetoric rather than physical violence.

A young queen falls in love with her physician, and they start a revolution that changes their nation forever.

Helen, a priest, is approached by scientist Lisbeth with a desperate plea for help. A young man, who has been sent to a high security psychiatric ward after having killed an old couple, has attempted suicide while rambling about God. Having been part of an experiment attempting to humanize inmates by assigning them pets, the young man has suddenly gone ballistic. Fearing that he will attempt suicide again priest and scientist must now confront their mutual animosities while trying to grasp the truth. In a race against time the two women begin a shocking journey deeper and deeper into the sick mind of a young man's soul.

A film about Rikard, age 30. He is autistic and severely disfigured. He lives in a home for disabled people. He was separated from his mother as a three-year-old, and this continues to torment him today. To deal with life's trials, Rikard escapes into a fantasy world in which he's a 50-meter-tall giant.

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.

Göran and Sven have been cleared for adoption and they have a possibility to adopt a swedish orphan, Patrik 1,5. But when Patrik arrives he turns out to be someone else, not the little boy they were expecting. A comma had been misplaced, and in comes a 15-year-old homophobic with a criminal past.

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.

Epic story about two families and their friendship and common destiny in Sweden's Gothenburg in the 1940s and 1950s. Told from the perspective of young Simon Larsson, who learns that he's an adopted child who has a Jewish father from Germany. After WWII Simon travels to explore his roots - a journey that leads to the basic mysteries of the human life. After the bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson.

From the producer of Dosage V - Alpine Blocs comes a 35mm bouldering flick about bouldering on planet Earth: PURE. Pure is about 19 extraordinary climbers in six countries on three continents , with no ropes.

In the 1910s, journalist Arvid Stjärnblom and painter's daughter Lydia Stille fall in love with each other.

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

While in a party promoted by her chief and friend Måns Wenngren, the fiscal attorney, Rebecka Martinsson, receives a call from her former sister-in-law, Sanna Strandgård, telling that her brother and preacher Viktor was murdered, stabbed and with severed hands, and she would be arrested. Rebecka heads to her hometown Kiruna and defends Sanna, but the evidences found by the police in her house prove her guilty and she is arrested. While investigating the crime, Rebecka is haunted by her past and faces the bigoted and fanatic religious dwellers that worship the local church, and is more convinced of the innocence of Sanna.

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.

On a hiking trip to rekindle their marriage, a couple find themselves fleeing for their lives in the unforgiving wilderness from an unknown shooter.

What would it be like to step inside a great work of art, have it come alive around you, and even observe the artist as he sketches the very reality you are experiencing? From Lech Majewski, one of Poland's most acclaimed filmmakers, The Mill and the Cross is a cinematic re-staging of Pieter Bruegel's masterpiece "Procession to Calvary," presented alongside the story of its creation.

A grieving widower moves to the country where a chance encounter rekindles memories from his past.

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.

After a year abroad Estelle returns home to collect her husband's share of the loot from a major robbery.

It's 1975, and Martin is a teenager looking to break out of a stifling home environment ruled by his alcoholic father and long-suffering mother. When Martin's pal Micke suggests they get jobs together as waiters at a resort off the Swedish coast, Martin is all for it, but before long Micke finds better things to do and Martin is left on his own. The presence of pretty fellow server Jenny is a major consolation, but to his surprise, guileless Martin is soon chosen as the protégé of Gösta, the resort's short-tempered manager. Gösta clearly likes Martin and makes him his right hand man, which gives Martin a crash course in the seedy side of life when he discovers Gösta has a number of other business interests, not all of which are legal or ethical.

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.

Inspired by the true events of the infamous 1983 prison breakout of 38 IRA prisoners from HMP Maze, which was to become the biggest prison escape in Europe since World War II.

While working in the US on a temporary visa as a caretaker, Mara, a 30 year-old single mother from Romania, marries Daniel, an American. After the arrival of her son Dragos, everything seems to have fallen perfectly into place. When the process of getting a green card veers unexpectedly off course, however, Mara is faced with abuses of power on every level and forced to answer a dark question about herself – how far would you go to get what you want?

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.

Alena’s life is far from simple. When she arrives at her new elite boarding school, Filippa and the other girls start to harass her. But Alena’s best friend Josefin won’t let her take anymore beating. If she won’t strike back, Josefin will do it for her. Hard.

"Monica Z" is a biopic about the Swedish singer and actress Monica Zetterlund focusing on her journey from a job as a telephone operator in a small town in Sweden to stardom in the clubs of New York and Stockholm.

Bröderna Hårdrock is a film about two brothers who are planning a heavy metal convention in their sleepy village. Their mother, the village priest, worries about them and wants them to settle down and have families. A young female teacher and line dance instructor in the village sets both their hearts beating faster and, unaware of each other's feelings, they enter a battle to win her affections.

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.

Djata is a care-free 12-year-old growing up in a brutal dictatorship shut off from the outside world. When the government imprisons his father, Peter, and Djata and his mother Hannah are labeled traitors, the boy will not rest until he sees his father again.