New Nordic Cinema
February 29 through May 4, 2012
Wednesdays @ 7 pm & Fridays @ 6:30 pm
Each $10 ($7 ASF Members); Series pass: $80 ($55 ASF Members)
Scandinavia House brings some of the most influential and successful Nordic films to New York audiences this spring with films from Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Norway, and Sweden.
SWEDEN
Balls/Farsan
April 11 & April 13
Directed by Josef Fares (Sweden, 2010). Lebanese-Swedish director Josef Fares gives his real-life father a star-making turn in this charming tale with light comedic overtones about family life among Middle Eastern immigrants living in Scandinavia. The gregarious Aziz (Jan Fares) is a widower looking for love with the help of his co-workers at a rinky-dink bike shop, while his son and daughter-in-law promise to make him a grandfather. He doesn't realize that they can't conceive naturally, however, so they're faking the pregnancy and planning to adopt. When Aziz goes looking for a warm and suitable grandmother, nothing really goes according to plan. Balls is a comedy about love, friendship, and the art of being a man.
98 min.
Glowing Stars/I taket lyser stjärnorna
April 18 & April 20
Directed by Lisa Siwe (Sweden, 2009). Jenna (Josefine Mattsson) is a girl currently in the seventh grade. Like a normal teenage girl, she worries about her breasts not growing, why she is not as popular as Ullis (Mika Berndtsdotter Ahlén), and how she can get Sakke (Samuel Haus) to fall in love with her or at least notice that she exists. When Jenna's mother Liv (Annika Hallin) is diagnosed with cancer, they are forced to move to Jenna's grandmother (Anki Lidén), who Jenna finds annoying. Jenna's grandmother lives next door to Ullis, who is living with her alcoholic mother. A friendship begins to grow between Jenna and Ullis after they realize that they both have struggling mothers.
Based on the 2003 youth novel by Johanna Thydell, Glowing Stars deals with the difficulty of losing a loved one. But it is also a film about friendship, identity, and survival.
90 min.
Special thanks to the Danish Film Institute, Film
