After a sparse spring, there will be a lot of Swedish content on the screen in the fall. Martina Haag's directorial debut "There's something that doesn't feel right" premieres as early as the end of August, which she thinks feels fantastic.
I'll never be able to make a film as good as this again, it's sad to peak with my debut film, she says and laughs.
When she got divorced, she wrote the book she herself had needed. The film also includes a continuation, so that you get to follow both the 15-year-old girl who says "I'll never get divorced", and the 50-year-old woman who realizes that her husband is unfaithful. Martina Haag felt a responsibility to the readers to portray the pain for real.
You want someone to say "I've been where you are and you'll survive, even if it doesn't feel that way". I only found a lot of happy divorce books and I didn't think it was the least bit fun to get divorced.
Absurdity
Veronica Maggio is also entering the film world with a love story. She and director Andreas Öhman both had complicated love lives and jokingly wrote about a "system" for success. But during filming, Veronica Maggio had to struggle to lower her guard.
In film, it becomes more interesting the more you get to see of the person. While in the pop industry I come from, it's more about presenting a polished surface and being something elevated that doesn't exist.
Lisa Langseth is also tackling a serious topic with humor in "The dance club", about people who seek therapy but find dance. She began to take an interest in society's growing fixation on NPF diagnoses, and is critical of the care companies' way of diagnosing.
They get paid per investigation, since we've sold out the welfare system.
Where does the dance come in?
I want to find a way to talk about this in a light way, that's entertaining. There's an absurdity in thinking you can say how a person works by answering a few questions on a piece of paper.
Raw and fragile
In the film "Kevlarsjäl", the love between two brothers is instead in focus. They grow up in symbiosis, with an alcoholic father. Director Maria Eriksson-Hecht tells about their tough life with poetic social realism.
I've wanted to do something that's raw, hard but also beautiful and fragile, she says.
There will also be horror, several documentaries about well-known Swedes and international ventures - from the twisted "Egghead republic" set in Kazakhstan to Tarik Saleh's film about the Egyptian film industry.
It's an incredibly promising fall, compared to the spring when there was a record-low number of Swedish films, says Eva Hamilton, chairman of the film and TV producers.
