Distributed by ITV Studios, “Blackwater,” the new banner series from Apple Tree producer Piv Bernth – behind iconic Scandinavian series “The Killing,” “The Bridge” and “Borgen” – opens in premonitory mode with the camera panning away from a falcon to take in the Lobber River’s white water and churning slate grey currents as a supernatural horror-movie chant bleeds into the soundtrack.
The foreboding anticipates a double murder on the river’s banks and conveys a broader sense sluicing the series of the menace of nature itself – both the chilling woods around Blackwater, a village in mid-Sweden, and latent human brutality.
In 1973, on Midsummer’s Eve, Annie, a young in-love schoolteacher who has just arrived in the area, discovers the bodies of two murdered tourists on the banks of the river. Glimpsing a man running away from the crime scene, she will live in fear for the next 20 years, sleeping with a shotgun beside her bed.
The foreboding anticipates a double murder on the river’s banks and conveys a broader sense sluicing the series of the menace of nature itself – both the chilling woods around Blackwater, a village in mid-Sweden, and latent human brutality.
In 1973, on Midsummer’s Eve, Annie, a young in-love schoolteacher who has just arrived in the area, discovers the bodies of two murdered tourists on the banks of the river. Glimpsing a man running away from the crime scene, she will live in fear for the next 20 years, sleeping with a shotgun beside her bed.
- 1/27/2023
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
ITV Studios, Fremantle and Federation Studios, partnering with Apple Tree Productions, Elisa Viihde and TV 2 Norge, will go head to head with Nordic powerhouses Glassriver and Dr at next year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize which promises to underscore the large breadth of current Scandinavia scripted series.
Backed by the Göteborg Film Festival and Nordisk Film & TV Fond, the 7th edition of the Prize, awarded to series’ main writers, also looks set to shine a spotlight on high-profile and on-the-rise writing talent such as Icelandic thesp Anita Briem, who played Jean Seymour in “The Tudors,” and Finnish creator-director Matti Kinnunen, whose “Cargo” was reckoned one of the strongest contenders at the 2021 Prize.
Carrying a €20,000 cash endowment, the Prize will be presented on Feb. 1 to the winning series’ main writer at TV Drama Vision, the Göteborg Film Festival’s conference event and series market.
“Today there is a...
Backed by the Göteborg Film Festival and Nordisk Film & TV Fond, the 7th edition of the Prize, awarded to series’ main writers, also looks set to shine a spotlight on high-profile and on-the-rise writing talent such as Icelandic thesp Anita Briem, who played Jean Seymour in “The Tudors,” and Finnish creator-director Matti Kinnunen, whose “Cargo” was reckoned one of the strongest contenders at the 2021 Prize.
Carrying a €20,000 cash endowment, the Prize will be presented on Feb. 1 to the winning series’ main writer at TV Drama Vision, the Göteborg Film Festival’s conference event and series market.
“Today there is a...
- 12/16/2022
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Sanctuary
Written by Karin Arrhenius
Directed by Fredrik Edfeldt
Sweden/Finland, 2013
Sanctuary opens on a rural home in the Swedish countryside, the serenity of which is soon interrupted by the arrival of police. The child occupant Hella (Clara Christiansson), is questioned as to the location of her father, wanted on suspicion of murder. After they leave, the wanted man (Jakob Cedergren) returns, and the pair flee into large woodlands. It’s not an easy journey from the offset: the family dog has to be shot and a police car gets sent into a ditch in a roadside pursuit. They soon seem free from immediate pursuit, however, and construct a makeshift woodland home in which to live. The father and daughter are brought closer together, even if environmental concerns and the odd encounters with other people provide their own set of problems, though the authoritarian threat inevitably returns to tear them apart.
Written by Karin Arrhenius
Directed by Fredrik Edfeldt
Sweden/Finland, 2013
Sanctuary opens on a rural home in the Swedish countryside, the serenity of which is soon interrupted by the arrival of police. The child occupant Hella (Clara Christiansson), is questioned as to the location of her father, wanted on suspicion of murder. After they leave, the wanted man (Jakob Cedergren) returns, and the pair flee into large woodlands. It’s not an easy journey from the offset: the family dog has to be shot and a police car gets sent into a ditch in a roadside pursuit. They soon seem free from immediate pursuit, however, and construct a makeshift woodland home in which to live. The father and daughter are brought closer together, even if environmental concerns and the odd encounters with other people provide their own set of problems, though the authoritarian threat inevitably returns to tear them apart.
- 6/27/2013
- by Josh Slater-Williams
- SoundOnSight
Flickan / The Girl (2009) Direction: Fredrik Edfeldt Cast: Blanca Engström, Tova Magnusson-Norling, Emma Wigfeldt, Michelle Vistam, Vidar Fors Screenplay: Karin Arrhenius In rural Sweden, a young girl's parents jet off to Africa on a charity trip, leaving the child (Blanca Engström) in the care of an inattentive aunt. The Girl — that's how she's listed in the credits, her name is never revealed — quickly tires of her caretaker's cycle of wild parties in the evening and hangovers in the morning, and contrives a way to send her off on a trip with an old boyfriend. The Girl is a quiet, observant type, and, though she has friends in a skinny farm boy and a chubby teenage girl who lives in a nearby town, she quickly adapts to life on her own. Fredrik Edfeldt's Flickan / The Girl, Honorable Mention for Best Debut Film at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, is fairly adept [...]...
- 3/3/2011
- by Dan Erdman
- Alt Film Guide
Director: Fredrik Edfeldt Writer(s): Karin Arrhenius (screenplay) Starring: Blanca Engström, Calle Lindqvist, Tova Magnusson-Norling, Shanti Roney, Annika Hallin The titular girl (Blanca Engström) -- who remains unnamed throughout the film -- is left behind by her idealist parents (Shanti Roney & Annika Hallin) who are off to Africa with their older son (Calle Lindqvist) for a feel good summer of helping and saving Africans. Six months shy of 10-years old, the girl is too young to travel with them. A free-spirited aunt (Tova Magnusson-Norling) is summoned to stay with the girl, but it soon becomes obvious that parenting is not the aunt’s forte. In a film in which it is the adults who act the most irresponsible, selfish and childish -- at least in the absence of other adults -- the girl is soon left alone fending for herself. (You know, like Home Alone...but without Joe Pesci and Swedish.
- 9/17/2010
- by Don Simpson
- SmellsLikeScreenSpirit
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