“New Swedish Films. Female Dimension” festival
As a movie gift to all the ladies of Kyiv for March 8, the festival “New Swedish Films. Female dimension” opens this Thursday and lasts for only four days. However, the fest is interesting not just because of its timely female theme, it also gives a chance to get better acquainted with modern Swedish cinema, which many know solely by Ingmar Bergman’s works and other old classics.
The festival program is comprised of films created in recent years and united by the theme of women and the ways they realize themselves in the modern world.
The extreme drama “Harry’s Daughters,” which won the Audience Award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival in 2005, will open the festival. This claustrophobic drama with psycho-thriller elements stars actresses Lena Endre and Amanda Ooms as two siblings who increasingly lock themselves in their own separate worlds. The sisters, Marie and Ninni, grew up together and even looked forward to becoming mothers together. But things don’t go as planned. Ninni miscarries her pregnancy causing the family idyll to be destroyed, and envy and enmity between the sisters grows.
The winner of the prestigious Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, “Four Weeks in June,” features outstanding performances by two of Scandinavia’s best actresses: Danish veteran Ghita Norby and new Swedish sensation Tuva Novotny. This cross-generational drama focuses on the friendship between an elderly Jewish woman, Lilly, anda troubled twenty-something Swedish girl. When thrown together by accident as neighbors in a dilapidated apartment building, the two soon develop a budding friendship.Director Henry Meyer based the film on a wartime story told to him by his mother, and set this contemporary story against a backdrop of Jewish lives and loves ruptured by history.
“Four Women” depicts the relationships between four women and the men in their lives. Monika travels with her video camera to visit her friends Annette, Karen, and Malin, and as they spend a few summer weeks together, Monika tapes herself and her friends talking about their relationships, trust, and problems with other people.
Colin Nutley’s film “Gossip” is a chronicle of the trials and tribulations starring the ten most famous actresses in Sweden, all vying to play the lead in a new version of the classic Greta Garbo movie “Queen Christina.”
Kyiv (19 Chervonoarmiyska, 234-7381). Tickets from Hr 20 to Hr 40
Harry’s Daughters – March 6, 7:15 p.m.
Four Weeks in June – March 7, 7:15 p.m.
Four Women – March 8, 7:15 p.m.
Gossip – March 9, 7:15 p.m.
All films are shown in the original with simultaneous translation
