European Films

The follow-up to the critical- and audience success Äideistä parhain (Mother of Mine) for Finnish director Klaus Härö will be the Swedish feature Den nya människan (The New Man). Parhain was already partly in Swedish and starred Swede Maria Lundqvist as the adoptive mother of a Finnish war child. His new film will again star Lundqvist, this time as a superintendant at an institution where the main character Gertrud (played by newcomer Julia Högberg) will find herself. The theme of the film is a controversial one: the compulsory sterilisation of the 1950s.

Norwegian director Petter Næss certainly keeps busy; fresh of his success of the third Elling film, he is now shooting Hoppet (The Jump), a new Swedish film that sounds like a distant cousin to Sweden’s Foreign Language Oscar submission Zozo; it also tells the story of a young boy (in this case the 12-year-old Azad) who has to flee from the middle East (the Lebanon in Zozo, Kurdistan in Næss’s film) and comes to Sweden, where he will be reunited with his family. In Hoppet, Azad will be accompanied by his mute brother on his voyage; the tiyle is a reference to the fact that Azad is a high jump champion. Swedish author Moni Nilsson-Brännström wrote the script.