Our films 1919-2020

The golden age of Swedish film led companies to invest in larger and more ambitious projects. One of these was the 1922 film Witchcraft Through…

Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer is, along with Ingmar Bergman, one of the most celebrated Scandinavian filmmakers. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Vampyr…

In 2012, Sweden’s leading film review magazine, FLM, asked its readers to vote for the best Swedish film of all time. The Phantom Carriage (Swedish: Körkarlen),…

The Legend of Gösta Berling (Swedish: Gösta Berlings saga) brings together three legendary names. Selma Lagerlöf, the author of the novel upon which the film was based,…

When cinema audiences in the USA first heard sound in the movies they burst out laughing – that’s how strange it was. The Dream Waltz…

Intermezzo was Ingrid Bergman’s international breakthrough and the film that took her to Hollywood. The films she’d previously made at SF Studios included The Count…

A Subtle Flirt (Swedish: En stilla flirt), based on a Norwegian novel by Edith Øberg and directed by Gustaf Molander, is about an orphaned girl, Diddi Werner…

Only seven Swedish films have won an Oscar. The first was Arne Sucksdorff’s Symphony of a City (Swedish: Människor i stad), which won Best Short Film in…

The great director-in-waiting was bedridden due to illness and, according to his own account, the film came to him in a flash, like a vision….

Night Riders (Swedish: Rid i natt!), with its serious tone and biting dialogue, was released at the height of the Second World War and gave renewed…

The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet), released in 1957, is probably the best-known Swedish film ever made. Along with Persona and Fanny & Alexander,…

For more than a century, three generations of the Ekman family left their mark on Swedish films. Gösta, Hasse and Gösta (the younger) Ekman were…

Writing for the newspaper Expressen, the final words of Lasse Bergström’s review of Hasse Alfredsson and Tage Danielsson’s second film at SF Studios, To Go…

For Stimulantia (1967), eight Swedish directors were given free rein to make their own interpretation of the theme: stimulation. The original idea came from Ingmar…

It would be difficult to find a Swede or, indeed, a Scandinavian, who doesn’t feel a connection with the film adaptations of Astrid Lindgren’s books….

Jan Troell’s film The Emigrants (1971) is based on the first two parts of Vilhelm Moberg’s series The Emigrants, written between 1949 and 1952. The…

The Man on the Roof (Swedish: Mannen på Taket) is based on Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s detective novel The Abominable Man. Directed by Bo Widerberg, it’s…

On 4 December 1981, tickets went on sale in Sweden for the big Christmas film, the comedy Beware of the Jönsson Gang.  Eventually more than…

My Life as a Dog (Swedish: Mitt liv som hund) is one of SF Studios’ biggest successes, and its first big VHS success. Besides the…

In 1980, the first in what would be a whole series of films was released. Package Tour centres on the toaster-controller Stig-Helmer Olsson (played by…

In Sweden, most people born before 1990 have some kind of relationship with the TV soap-opera Three Crowns. The series revolved around the Wästberg family…

Few people have managed to capture Swedishness on film as well as Englishman Colin Nutley. Black Jack (1990) was his first film with SF Studios….

One of the most enduring franchises in contemporary Norwegian film history is Burning, directed by Hallvard Bræin. The franchise about the character Roy (played by…

Only eight directors have won the Palme d’Or more than once. Danish director Bille August is one of them. Silent Heart had its world premiere…

That Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel about the world-weary widower Ove would become a popular film perhaps wasn’t so surprising. After all the book, which was…

One of the most acclaimed films of the last few years, not least internationally, is Borg/McEnroe. The film depicts Björn Borg’s journey from his upbringing…