29/06/2016 - Seven fiction features and feature-length documentaries will benefit from a €7.6 million support package announced on 27 June

Swedish director Ruben Östlund, whose latest film, Force Majeure [+see also:
film review
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interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile] (2014), won 31 international awards, including the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes, and was nominated for a Golden Globe, will shortly start principal photography for his fifth feature, The Square [+see also:
film review
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interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile] (read the news).

“A stylish, pertinent, satirical drama that revolves around some of our most important contemporary issues," is how Stockholm’s Plattform Produktion describes Östlund’s script, which takes place in a free zone where all people have the same rights and obligations. Erik Hemmendorff will produce for a 2017 premiere.

The Square will be co-funded by the Swedish Film Institute, which on 27 June announced a €7.6 million support package covering 15 new film projects, including seven fiction features and feature-length documentaries.

Swedish actress Alicia Vikander has already starred in two films by Swedish director Lisa Langseth, Pure [+see also:
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film profile] (2009) and Hotell [+see also:
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film profile] (2013), and her new production company, Vikarious Productions, will stage the third, with Vikander in the main role. Euphoria [+see also:
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film profile] will also be receiving backing from the institute.

Produced by Annika Hellström and Agneta Fagerström-Olsson for 2afilm, Swedish director Rojda Emanuelsson’s first feature, Dream On, follows Mirja and her friends in the suburbs, as she is released from a stretch in prison. 

Swedish writer-director Ingmar Bergman’s 100th birthday will be celebrated in 2018, and Swedish director Jane Magnusson will make her contribution through a documentary and three-part television series, Bergman - A Year in a Life [+see also:
film review
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interview: Jane Magnusson
film profile] , from Mattias Nohrborg’s script, which has also been granted a state subsidy (read the news).

Lastly, the SFI also chipped in for two Nordic co-productions: Finnish director Selma Vilhunen’s Hobbyhorse Revolution [+see also:
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film profile] (working title Hobbyhorse Sisters) (Bautafilm with Finland’s Tuffi Films) and Danish director Janus Metz’s Between Two Worlds (Vilda Bomben Film with Denmark’s Magic Hour Films).