UNMISSABLE Films at Stockholm International Film Festival 2019

It’s the time of year in Stockholm that we all love : The Film Festival is back and celebrating its 30th anniversary with a fantastic movie line-up. During 12 days there will be around 200 films from over 60 countries to watch right here in the capital of Scandinavia . The Festival is known for highlighting young and diverse filmmakers. In fact, on average, every third film at the festival is made by a debutant. In the competition section, only directors who have previously made a maximum of two movies can participate.

This year, special homage is paid to French cinema with 25 French movies on display and also the inauguration of a brand new cinema “Park” by Alma on Sturegatan.

The editors right here at Your Living City took on the task of going through all the film reviews and trailers to select 18 films that are a MUST SEE at the Stockholm International Film Festival 2019.

It’s worth mentioning that all films that are not in English will be screened with English subtitles, to facilitate access to the international community attending the festival.

Parasite

By South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho, Parasite won this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival becoming the first Korean film to receive the award and the first film to win with  an unanimous vote since 2013’s “Blue is the Warmest Colour.”

Although Bong Joon-Ho has not received any major international prices up until now, he has had an obvious place on the world stage with his unbelievably ambitious and unique genre. The director broke through with the masterful serial killer thriller “Memories of Murder” in the early 2000s and has since worked methodically from genre to genre with both self-confidence and brilliance.

The depiction of the destructive power of economic anxiety and oppressive societal hierarchies is painfully right in time. The story follows the Kim family, who, after a long period in the lower strata of the class, slowly but surely nurtures themselves into an affluent upper-class family.

I am not sure we can call “Parasite” a satirical black comedy thriller because in fact it could fall into so many different categories. It is the type of movie that will make you laugh, cry, and feel uncomfortable bringing up so many different emotions at once. This movie makes you reflect about life and its values –  and ultimately about yourself for many days after watching it.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

I Guds namn (“Grâce à Dieu“)

By French director François Ozon, “Grâce à Dieu” is the winner of  this year’s Berlin Silver Bear. François Ozon is known for portraying women in his movies (“Under the sand”, “Swimming pool”, “Double desire”), focuses this time on men and the institution of the church.

It is a movie about how abuse at a young age crushes life in so many levels. It is a movie about friendship, family, faith and rehabilitation after one of the most despicable crimes: paedophilia, especially when applied by a man of faith, a priest. It is a fiction based on real life events, where the director deliberately kept the names of the accused priests and the people protecting them.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

Jojo Rabbit

By New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi, “Jojo Rabbit” won the Toronto International Film Festival’s top price. 

It is an American satirical black comedy based on Christine Leunens‘s book Caging Skies. Roman Griffin Davis portrays the main character, a Hitler Youth who finds out his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic.

Waititi says about his movie: “We must continue to remember, continue to find creative ways to tell these war stories. To teach ourselves and our children about how to grow, unite with love, and move forward into the future.” The director showing us here that humour is the best weapon.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Porträtt av en Kvinna i brand (“Portrait de la jeune fille en feu”)

From French director Céline Sciamma, the film won the Chicago International top prize.

Enigmatic and historical drama taking place in isolated Brittany in France at the end of the eighteenth century. The artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of the young noble lady Héloise (Adèle Haenel) who has just left the convent and is a reluctant bride.

In terms of tone, and after “Tomboy” (2011) and “Girlhood” (2014), Sciamma embarks on a new style. The darkness and drama attest of a new mastery of classical style with an artistic breadth. Although the film is thematically familiar, she has found a brilliant new expression of what she has previously explored in all her movies – the unwillingness to be nurtured by conventions and norms, the unwillingness to be framed and nailed. It is nothing less than an exquisite, world-class sensual drama in the smallest details.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Just 6,5 (“Metri Shesh-o Nim”)

By Iranian director Saeed Roustayi. A social drama and thriller, which because it is starring Payman Maadi, can also be categorised as a character movie. The ones who have seen Maadi previously in his Silver Bear awarded movie “A separation”, know how he can turn a movie into a character movie. His deep gaze, natural charisma and effortless line of appearance captures the audience’s attention immediately. The young Iranian film maker addresses the issues of addiction, family crisis caused by day-to-day struggles and social drama in Iran.

The Stockholm Achievement Award will be awarded to the actor, screenwriter and director Payman Maadi, who relies on the boundary breaking abilities of art and is passionate about reaching a broader audience.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Ema 

By Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín. Set in the port city of Valparaiso, Larraín’s latest movie, a diffuse thriller of sorts – brings us into the life of Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) and Gaston (Gael Garcia Bernal), an estranged married couple who work together at the local dance company. Each blames the other for abandoning their adoptive son Polo, who has been returned to the orphanage.

Explosion of dance, loss and desire, “Ema” makes the director’s earlier work such as “Tony Manero” with John Travolta, or “Jackie” with Natalie Portman appear colourless and stripped down. Urban music video or dreamy contemporary depiction, “Ema” is an intoxicating mix we have never tasted before.

For music lovers, the music in the movie is composed by Chilean-French composer and DJ, Nicolas Jaar.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

Marriage Story 

By American director Noah Baubach. With its slightly ironic title, “Marriage Story” is a bitterly sweet chronicle of how even a breakup can remind you why you fell for each other in the first place. How each romance carries seeds to its own downfall and perhaps it is only afterwards that dramatic and emotionally charged life choices can truly be understood.

Noah Baumbach‘s intelligent script starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver pulls red threads back and forth through time and space in what could be seen as a modern version of Kramer vs Kramer in the depiction of the couple’s love and marriage. A very personal movie for Baubach, himself divorced and raised by divorced parents.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Arab Blues (“Un divan à Tunis”)

By French-Tunisian director Manele Labidi Labbé. After several years in Paris, Selma played by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani returns to her native Tunisia with a dream of starting a psychology practice. But it does not turn out quite easily. Many potential patients are sceptical of this strange “conversation cure” while yet getting hooked to it and she has the bureaucracy against her.

“Arab Blues”, which is in the Competition this year, is a fun and sophisticated comedy that portrays, with strong warmth and humour, the lives of different people, in modern and post revolutionary Tunisia and Selma’s own struggle with her dual identity. Many could think this is a Woody Allen type movie !

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

The Traitor (“Il Traditore”)

From Italian film director Marco Bellochio. Biographical drama film about Mafia leader Tommaso Buscetta, who begins to cooperate with the police in the 80’s in Sicily, putting his own but also his family’s life at risk. This reality-based movie is a fascinating insight into the Italian mafia. Peter Francisco Favino makes a poignant role performance as Buscetta, the first Italian mafia boss to become a public informant. Bellocchio orchestrates a masterful gangster opera based on a captivating piece of criminal history.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Om det oändliga (“About the Infinite“)

By Sweden’s own Roy Andersson. With “About the Infinite”, Roy Andersson follows up his cinematic expression with a reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its extravagance, its banality, aspirations and failures.

The film’s Swedish premiere takes place at the Skandia cinema on Sunday 10 November at. 18.00 in the presence of the master director himself, Roy Andersson. The film is presented by Ruben Östlund. And you can mingle with them on the red carpet, an evening that promises to be absolutely fantastic.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

The Lighthouse

Director Robert Eggers entered the contemporary film history with the horror masterpiece “The Witch” (2015). A tightly stylised twilight story about a Christian family in 1630’s New England, who move to the edge of a dark forest where their existence is torn apart by black magic and obsession.

The dark forest has been replaced by a desolate lighthouse when Eggers returns to his beloved (but frightening) New England just over two hundred years later in history. “The Lighthouse” is a quirky chamber game centred on two isolated lighthouse keepers, played by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe.  They are both exposed to each other and their own, alcohol-marinated psyche on a desolate, wind-swept island where they together watch over a mysterious lighthouse with hypnotic forces.

Like “The Witch“, “The Lighthouse” is a sneaky film that wraps its tentacles around the audience and pulls us into the depths of urgency. With salt, archaic Thomas Melville dialogue and a treacherously beautiful black and white photo in Béla Tarr style, we are rocked into madness. The experience can be likened to “The Shining“, though with two Jack Torrance sharing rooms with each other. This year’s most absorbing and hard-to-forget film has been washed ashore.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

Monos

By Alejandro Landes. On a distant hilltop, eight armed children watch over their American hostages and a lent milk cow. They adhere to hedonism, partying and football. But when the group is forced into the rainforest, the game goes into bloody seriousness. Colombia’s Oscar nomination is a feverish survival thriller that cuts its own path through the jungle and festival awards have followed director Alejandro Landes closely in his tracks.

Alejandro Iñárittu has likened the movie to a “cinematic heart attack” while The Guardian’s legendary film critic Peter Bradshaw called the cinematic experience “Apocalypse Now” on mushrooms.

With breathtakingly beautiful scenery and hypnotic tones from Oscar-nominated “Under the Skin” composer Mica Levy, “Monos” holds its audience hostage in a strange film world with completely new rules of play.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Charismatic Megafauna

The Guldbagge Awards winning photographer Fredrik Wenzel (“Tourist“, “Farewell Falkenberg“) together with Jesper Kurlandsky have created an audiovisual masterpiece. Charismatic Megafauna challenges the traditional film narrative with a wordless journey that depicts man’s impact on nature and our place in the cosmos.

Fredrik Wenzel, describes the film like this:

“Charismatic Megafauna” is a movie for those who appreciate the non-balanced film tradition such as the “Qatsi” trilogy, “Baraka“, “Samsara” and “Ashes and Snow“. There is also a kinship with the films that consider the relationship between humans and nature, inspired by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Edward Burtynsky, Jann Arthus Bertrand and Jennifer Baichwal. We wanted to take the idea of associative storytelling as far as we dared and trust that something happens to the viewer in the open reflections.”

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Matthias & Maxime

A film by French director Xavier Dolan. In “Matthias & Maxime“, the young filmmaker returns to Quebec for a tender and humorous story of male friendship and hidden feelings. Dolan himself plays the role of Maxime, who struggles to take care of his alcoholic mother, while his big move is approaching. In just a week, he leaves everything and travels to Australia for two years. His best friend Matthias, who lives a comfortable life with a law firm and girlfriend, thinks life feels so-so. During one last weekend with their friends, Matt and Max are persuaded to participate in a student film, where a kissing scene awaits. Maxime does not hesitate, but for Matthias the kiss brings some unexpected and uncomfortable feelings to the surface. Are the two meant to be more than friends? And is it too late to find out?

With a relaxed atmosphere and smart, clever dialogue, Xavier Dolan portrays the life of millenials around 30. Unexpected desire is depicted with life and energy. A tribute to friendship and love, and to all of us who have ever felt lost in life.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

The Farewell

By Lulu Wang, “The Farewell” has quickly become an audience favourite during the festival year, having taken home all four of the audience’s awards including Sundance film festival.

Billi (Awkwafina) travels to China to say goodbye to her grandmother in this hot drama comedy, but the family refuses to tell the grandmother that she is deadly ill. Lulu Wang’s personal story touches on generational differences, culture clashes and the confusing handling of a death sentence – a tribute movie based on a true-story lie.

Although “The Farewell” is a comedy, Nora Lum, better known as Awkwafina, has been forced to release the protective layer of humor she has surrounded herself with in films like “Ocean’s 8” and “Crazy Rich Asians” and now exposes a new level of vulnerability to the world. She shows that she is just as good at shouldering a multifaceted drama role as the light-hearted humor characters we are used to seeing her in.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Camorrans barn (“La Pranza Dei Bambini – Piranhas”)

By Claudio Giovannesi. The financial incentive of the criminal life is painfully clear in “Camorras barn” (La Pranza Dei Bambini – Piranhas), inspired by the internationally renowned “Gomorrah” which was based in the novel by author Roberto Saviano “The Blood Game – The Children of Camorra“. The film is a hit coming-of-age drama, whose script – written by director Claudio Giovannesi in collaboration with Saviano and Maruizio Braucci – was rewarded with the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

With a story that breathes Italian neo-realism, we follow teenager Nicola and his rootless friends in Naples’ poor neighborhood. They roll through narrow alleys on their scooters, smoke on, dream of expensive Daytona watches and crave for the power reserved for older people with greater violent capital. Without future faith, these little boys take to big guns. It vibrates by youthful immortality complexes in a world of drugs, money and tough men’s ideals.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

A Dog Called Money

A film by Seamus Murphy. In the acclaimed photojournalist Seamus Murphy‘s intimate documentary, we are invited on the journey behind PJ Harvey‘s Grammy-nominated ninth album. The journey, which travels through Afghanistan and Kosovo, ending in Washington’s poor neighbourhoods is an eye-opener for both the public and Harvey herself.

Through the documentary, Murphy‘s brilliant eye for visual detail shines through. Shaking pictures of ravaged children’s faces and heavily armed US soldiers on the streets of Kabul are interchanging. At the same time, we get an insight into PJ Harvey‘s artistic genius as she writes down the strong impressions – which then become the songs on her album.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.

 

Color Out Of Space

By Richard Stanley. Nicolas Cage follows up the festival favorite »Mandy« with a very awaited filmatisation of H.P. Lovecraft‘s “Color Out Of Space“, one of the author’s more horrific stories. Cage plays a family father who lives in an old farmhouse with his wife, his children and some alpacas. One day, a meteorite crashes on their site, which has mysterious and frightening consequences. Classic Cage moments meet body horror and 80s nostalgia in this neatly flipped sci-fi horror movie.

Film screening dates and venues:

Find your tickets here.