18/03/2014 - New films by experienced directors Colin Nutley and Kay Pollak, and feature debuts by Amanda Adolfsson and Magnus von Horn, are on the production slate

The Swedish Film Institute has shelled out €3.4 million for a package of seven new features, both from Swedish veteran directors – such as Colin Nutley’s Medicine and Kay Pollak’s Heaven on Earth – and newcomers, including Amanda Adolfsson’s Young Sophie Bell [+see also:
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film profile], financed by the Stockholm International Film Festival.

Medicine will be Nutley’s 15th feature and will be scripted by Edward af Sillén and Daniel Rehn, with Helena Bergström in the lead. Produced by Petra Jönsson and Nutley for Sweetwater, Medicine follows a lonely mother of two, Johanna, who finds it hard to say no. In a moment of weakness she promises her children a holiday abroad, and to finance the trip she enrolls in a project to test a new medicine, which turns out to have unexpected side effects.

The second film to receive the Stockholm International Film Festival’s €95,000 grant “to highlight woman directors in the beginning of their career,” Adolfsson’s Young Sophie Bell is the story of high-school graduates Sophie and Alice. As they are preparing their move to Berlin, Alice suddenly disappears. The screenplay by Adolfsson and Josefin Johansson will be produced by Gila Bergqvist Ulfung and Anna Knochenhauer for Breidablick.

After his 2012 crime comedy Roland Hassel [+see also:
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film profile], Swedish director Måns Månsson will adapt Swedish writer Kristian Lundberg’s novel The Yard for the screen, from a script by Sara Nemeth. The depiction of Anders, a writer who takes a working-class job as a driver, will be produced by Gunnar Carlsson and Emma Åkesdotter Runge for Anagram Film & TV.

Swedish director Magnus von Horn has himself scripted The Here After, about a 17-year-old boy who has murdered his girlfriend and who, after having served his sentence, returns to the community where he committed the crime. After several award-winning shorts, Horn’s feature debut will be produced by Madeleine Ekman for Zentropa International Swede and Mariusz Włodarski for Poland’s Lava Film. Sophie Erbs from France’s Cinéma Defacto is co-producing the project, which is also supported by the Polish Film Institute, Eurimages and Film i Väst.

Greetings from Up North, a romantic comedy written by Lars Vasa Johansson and Martina Haag, will be Swedish director Lisa Siwe’s next project. Yellow Bird’s Marianne Gray and Daniel Gylling will produce the portrait of Nadja, a young Stockholmer whose desperate longing for a child entices her into a bogus marriage in Lapland. But once there, nothing goes to plan. 

The Swedish Film Institute will also support Swedish director Pollak’s Heaven on Earth, an independent sequel to his Oscar-nominated As It Is in Heaven [+see also:
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film profile] (2004), and Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki’s The Girl King [+see also:
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film profile], a portrait of 17th-century Swedish Queen Kristina, starring Swedish actress Malin Buska.