Lars Jönsson Movies

Three years after his "experimental" phase wrapped with the jarring, iconoclastic Container, Swedish enfant terrible Lukas Moodysson returned for this sprawling, ambitious social drama. Echoing Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel and featuring two Hollywood A-listers as his leads, Mammoth also marked the director's premier English-language project. Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal co-star as Ellen and Leo, New York marrieds; she's an emergency-room surgeon, he's a listless, vaguely dissatisfied Internet game designer. They have a family, albeit an unconventional and dysfunctional one: seven-year-old daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) is practically being raised by a 24/7 Filipino caregiver, Gloria (Marife Necesito), who dotes on her incessantly. This provokes the envy of Ellen and the resentment of Gloria's two geographically estranged sons, Manuel (Martin Delos Santos) and Salvador (Jan Nicdao), who repeatedly phone their mom from Manila and plead with her to come home. Gloria's mother grows so distressed by this behavior that she attempts to show Salvador just how easy his life is in comparison to that of others, which leads to unanticipated tragic consequences. Meanwhile, Leo teams up with a shifty associate, Bob (Tom McCarthy), flies to Thailand, and encounters a freewheeling, laid-back working mother named Cookie (Run Srinikornchot). Step by step, the actions that Leo takes while abroad create a domino effect and alter everyone's lives in irreversible ways. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A man's inability to prevent his girlfriend from dying in a vicious attack festers into an all-consuming hunger for revenge that threatens to destroy both his own life and the lives of the ones he cares for most in director Josef Fares' introspective revenge drama. Leo and his girlfriend Amanda were on their way home from his thirtieth birthday party when they were violently attacked by two strangers. While Leo managed to escape relatively free from harm, Amanda was shot during the course of the altercation and died in the hospital shortly thereafter. Subsequently feeling completely powerless and unable to deal with the profound loss, Leo proves incapable of preventing his grief from morphing into something far more insidious. Though his friends do their best to try and steer him off of this self-destructive path, nothing they can say proves helpful in slowing his heart-rending cycle of hate and despair. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Director Jacob Thuesen takes a satirical look at the life of an aspiring filmmaker in this story of an emerging director who remains doggedly determined to realize his vision on the big screen despite the lofty pretension and swelling egos of his useless instructors and eccentric fellow students. Erik Nietzsche can't seem to grasp the unwritten rules of the film industry, and as a result he just doesn't seem to fit in. A calm observer to the chaos that swirls around him, Nietzsche falls in love, experiences the stress of union disputes, and struggles to deal with the absurdities of the entertainment industry before finally getting his one big shot at fame. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

With his 74-minute feature Container, Swedish avant-garde filmmaker Lucas Moodysson plunges, headfirst, into a surrealistic dreamscape and offers a sharp critique of contemporary society. In crafting this motion picture, the director pulls the audience into a different cinematic mindset - a stream of consciousness mode of storytelling, where he floods the viewer with everything at once - "relevant and irrelevant" - in lieu of a more conventional, linear narrative mode. Shot in patchy, grainy, high-contrast black-and-white, the film follows an obese man as he carries an Asian woman, piggyback, through a garbage-filled landscape. Meanwhile, an American actress (Jena Malone) narrates a series of free-association thoughts and voices a number of characters on the soundtrack, drifting languidly (in the Pynchonian sense) in and out of coherence - her observations laden with references to pop culture, spirituality, and consumerism. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A young boy faces challenges both funny and terrifying in this drama from writer and director Josef Fares. It's 1987, and Zozo (Imad Creidi) is a ten-year-old boy whose parents are struggling to flee Beirut as warfare in the streets accelerates. Zozo's grandparents have emigrated to Sweden, and his mother and father plan to follow as soon as their passports and exit visas are approved. On the day that their papers finally come through, Zozo's mother asks him to go outside and get something for her -- and just misses being killed by the shell that explodes into their home. With his parents dead and his older brother missing, Zozo sees little choice but to fetch his passport and airline ticket and make his way to the airport on foot. With his pet bird in tow and a young girl named Rita (Antoinette Turk) who is running away from home for company, Zozo sets out on the long walk that will be the first leg in his journey to a new home. In time, Zozo makes his way to Sweden, where he's taken in by his grandmother (Yasmine Awad) and grandfather (Elias Gergi). However, Zozo feels like a fish out of water in his unfamiliar surroundings, and the increasingly eccentric behavior of his grandparents does nothing to make him feel more comfortable in this strange land. Zozo was loosely inspired by the youthful experiences of Josef Fares, who himself emigrated to Sweden when he was ten. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An estranged couple are brought back together as they run for their lives in a future world where science as well as emotions have gone haywire in this sci-fi drama from director Thomas Vinterberg. In the year 2021, the world seems to have become a very strange place; an unexplained ailment is causing children to drop dead on the streets of New York, ice storms and floods strike major cities without notice, summer is marked by periodic snowfalls, and a strange hole has appeared in the Ugandan sky that causes people to loose the grip of gravity and drift off into space. In the midst of all this, internationally known figure skater Elena (Claire Danes) is getting divorced from her husband John (Joaquin Phoenix) after an 18-month separation. John has arrived in New York City to have Elena sign the divorce papers, but after finally making his way through her entourage, he discovers her to be unhappy and out of sorts, and she asks him to stay. John soon learns that Elena and her staff have a secret -- David (Alun Armstrong), her manager, has had Elena cloned, and now there are three duplicates of her to stand in if she should be killed or injured. John's discovery puts both him and Elena in grave danger, and they are soon on the run from David and his underlings. Meanwhile, Marciello (Sean Penn) ponders the unstable state of the world as he flies from one place to another after a heroic dose of pills designed to combat the fear of flying. It's All About Love received its North American premier at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Set in a small fictional town in the U.S. during the 1930s, Lars von Trier's Dogville was filmed in a studio with a minimal set and features narration by John Hurt. On the run from a group of gangsters, Grace (Nicole Kidman) arrives in the small mining town of Dogville. Town philosopher Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) takes her in and strikes a deal with her: She'll work for the townsfolk in exchange for a safe place to hide; after two weeks the people will vote for her to either stay or go. Grace agrees to the terms and ends up meeting the locals, including the town doctor (Philip Baker Hall), shopkeeper (Lauren Bacall), and apple farmer (Stellan Skarsgård). Eventually, Grace's standing in the town takes a downward shift as the search for her intensifies. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

A teenager abandoned by her family slips into a downward spiral of sex and degradation in this frank drama from Sweden. Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) is a 16-year-old girl growing up in poverty in the former Soviet Union. Lilya's mother (Lyubov Agapova) is moving to the United States with her new boyfriend, and Lilya has been told she'll be coming with them. However, at the last minute Lilya is informed she'll be staying behind with her aunt Anna (Liliya Shinkaryova), and she'll be joining her mother later on. Anna immediately takes over the apartment Lilya shared with her mother, and moves her niece into a much smaller (and dirtier) flat several blocks away. For the most part left on her own, Lilya spends much of her time with her best friend, Natasha (Elina Benenson), and comes to the rescue of Volodya (Artiom Bogucharski), a suicidal 14-year-old boy who has been thrown out of his home and has a serious problem with alcohol and drugs. One night at a nightclub, Natasha meets a man who is willing to pay her for sex; when her father finds the money, Natasha claims it belongs to Lilya, and the story soon spreads that Lilya is a prostitute. When Lilya learns that her mother has no intention of bringing her to the United States, she becomes despondent and begins sleeping with men for money. Not long after taking up the sex trade she meets Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov), who promises her a better and easier life if she'll come to Sweden with him. However, Lilya learns the hard way that there's no truth in Andrei's words as she is subjected to the lowest and most degrading levels of the sex-for-hire business. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The second feature from Lukas Moodysson, who directed the internationally acclaimed Fucking Åmål, Tillsammans is the tale of life on a Stockholm commune in the mid-'70s. After suffering more than her share of abuse from her husband, Rolf (Michael Nyqvist), Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren) takes her two children, Stefan (Sam Kessel) and Eva (Emma Samuelsson), to a commune run by her brother Göran (Gustav Hammarsten). Life at the commune is crowded with people with laid-back attitudes towards sex, nudity, and recreational drug use, prompting plenty of political debate. Göran's partner, Lena (Anja Lundkvist), is a particular proponent of free-spirited bed-hopping, something Göran doesn't really like but tolerates. Lena duly gets involved with the rebellious Erik (Olle Sarri) and finds fulfillment in the form of her first orgasm, something that leads her to confess to Göran that she was always faking it with him. Meanwhile, various dramas are at work amongst the other commune members, including the once-married Lasse (Ola Norell) and Anna (Jessica Liedberg) (who split up when Anna announced she was a lesbian) and Klas (Shanti Roney), whose advances to Lasse are continually rebuffed. The goings-on of the commune are observed and commented on by a pair of neighbors, Margit (Therese Brunnander) and Ragner (Claes Hartelius), whose marriage is so lackluster that Ragner masturbates compulsively. Their son, the fat and miserable Fredrik (Henrik Lundström), befriends Elisabeth's daughter, Eva, who longs to have a family again. When Rolf appears on the scene seeking reconciliation, it seems Eva may get her wish. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Ulf Malmros directs this warm comedy-drama about four loners learning to love again. A pair of young orphans, Marten (Anastasios Soulis) and Annika (Rebecka Scheja journey to a small village during the summer of 1958 to stay with crusty middle-aged Yngve (Kjell Bergqvist), who works both as a farmer and an undertaker. Though gruff and often grumpy, the two kids soon realize that Yngve still has a lot of love to give, and they set out to help him meet a woman. They happen upon Miss Svanstrom (Cecilia Nilsson), and before long Yngve and Miss Svanstrom are an item. That is, until the richest man in the village tries to foil their newfound happiness. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Show Me Love is a coming-of-age comedy set in a sleepy little Swedish town called Amal -- the most boring place on earth according to adolescent Agnes, who moved there a year and a half ago. Agnes is not able to make friends at school; the fact she has to sit next to a girl in a wheelchair doesn't help, either. She's in love with Elin, but no one knows about it except her computer. The title comes from Elin's frequent comment about her new home town. For Agnes' birthday, her parents organize a big party, but she is convinced that no one will come. For lack of anything better to do on a Saturday night, 14-year-old Elin and her older sister arrive at Agnes' door, but Agnes is busy crying her eyes out. Left alone in Agnes' bedroom, the mischievous sisters take a look at the computer and what they discover prompts them to play a dirty joke. If Elin can let Agnes kiss her, her sister will pay her 20 krona. The deed is done; Agnes is flabbergasted and soon humiliated when she finds out that she's been had. Rumors spread around the school like wildfire, and Agnes is the talk of the town. But super cool Elin begins to feel guilty; moreover, she has to admit she was not exactly indifferent to the kiss. In his first feature film, Lukas Moodysson shows the pains of growing up, particularly for a lesbian. Show Me Love was screened as part of the "Panorama" section of the 49th Berlin International Film Festival in 1999 and received the Teddy Award for Best Gay/Lesbian Film. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

If not a bonafide enfant terrible then certainly a true iconoclast, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier is an intriguing bundle of arrogance, contradictions and unbridled creativity as famous for his eccentricities as for some of his films. This documentary from noted Swedish film critic Stig Bjorkman offers a rare inside look at the creator of such well-regarded works as Breaking the Waves (1996) and Europa/Zentropa (1991). While offering insight into von Trier's life and creative process (including film clips), Bjorkman also gives equal time to the director's famous phobias and his hypochondria. In addition, Bjorkman interviews people who have worked closely with von Trier to provide further insight. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide