Samuel Fröler Movies

Jacob Eklund returns as hard-bitten cop Johan Falk in this sequel to the thriller Noll Tolerans. After causing a commotion with his last assignment, Falk has been given a desk job, which hardly agrees with his personality, and he ends up accepting an offer from an old friend to buy into a private investigation agency. Another friend of Falk's, Sven (Samuel Froler), purchased a business in Estonia, and when local gangsters attempted to pressure him into paying protection money, Sven retained the services of Nikolaus Lehmann (Christoph M. Ohrt), a burly private eye, to throw them off his trail. However, Lehmann does his job all too well, murdering the racketeers, and then threatening Sven and his family. With no where else to turn, Sven asks Falk to help him deal with the crazed Lehmann; Falk agrees, but soon realizes he's dealing with a more dangerous man than he imagined when Lehmann kidnaps Falk's wife Jeanette (Lia Boysen), and then releases her with a time bomb locked around her neck, demanding that Falk hand over ownership of his detective agency to Lehmann. Livvakterna was one of the first films shot using Sony's Cine Alta digital video system, which records images at 25 frames per second in order to conform with the speed of motion picture film in Europe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this compelling Swedish documentary, director-editor Jan Troell traces the efforts of three Scandinavian balloonists to reach the North Pole in 1897. The 60-minute film is based on authentic diaries, photos, and letters of the disaster, including materials recovered in 1930 when the remains of the expedition were discovered preserved in ice on a remote Polar Sea island. Norwegian Knut Fraenkel and two Swedes, Nils Strindberg and August Andrie, departed in 1897 in their balloon called Ornen (The Eagle), but little was known of their fate until the items found on White Island in 1930 were taken back to Sweden. Decades later, author Olof Sundblom used the diaries as the basis for his novel The Flight of the Eagle (1967). Jan Troell, known for such award-winning films as Here's Your Life (1968), The Emigrants (1972) and Hamsun (1996), did much additional research before he filmed his Oscar-nominated adaptation of Sundblom's novel, Flight of the Eagle (1983). Starring Max von Sydow, Goran Stangertz, and Sverre Anker Ousdal, the 1983 drama won various awards and competed at the Venice Film Festival. For this memorable and moving 1998 documentary, Troell drew on his experiences making the feature, adding short clips from that film to archival materials (deteriorating still photos found in the ice). New color footage was shot at both the expedition's starting point and its frozen finale. The tragedy is heard from the expedition's participants, brought to life through diary extracts read by von Sydow, Samuel Froler, and Rolf Lassgard. Anita Ekstrom provides the voice of Strindberg's fiancee. Seen in both Swedish theaters and TV, it was also shown at the 1998 Gothenburg Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Originally made for television and directed by distinguished Swedish actress-turned-director Liv Ullman, this provocative drama is a sequel to director-turned-screenwriter Ingmar Bergman's autobiographical Bille August-directed drama Best Intentions (1992). Returning to their roles of Bergman's parents are actors Pernilla August and Samuel Froler; their discussions are divided into five sections that take place over several years beginning on a Sunday in July, 1925 when young Anna Bergman runs into her old friend and mentor Jacob (Max von Sydow) an aged priest. She is obviously distraught about something and soon confesses to him that she has been cheating on her husband Henrik, also a priest, with yet another man of the cloth named Tomas Egerman (Thomas Hanzon). Jacob suggests she immediately end the affair and inform her husband. Several weeks pass and Anna finally heeds Jacob's advice. When her words finally sink in, Henrik becomes angry and begins grilling her for details. Her further confessions make matters worse. The tale then flashes back to Anna's seduction of Tomas, a situation which reveals truths unspoken by Anna in her confessions. The fourth segment of the story is set several years later. Anna visits the now elderly and frail Jacob. The final discussion jumps back to 1907 when the adolescent Anna first met Jacob and this segment reveals a few more truths about the nature of her friendship with Jacob. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Scripted (but not directed) by Ingmar Bergman, Best Intentions is a multilayered backwards glance at the courtship of Bergman's own parents. Henrik Bergman (Samuel Froler) is a struggling theology student in the year 1909. His intended, Anna Aakerbloom (Pernilla August, who married director Bille August while the film was in progress) is from a well-to-do family. Despite the expected class differences and personality clashes, love-or at least mutual understanding-prevails. But after a harsh, spare few years as the wife of a clergyman, Anna yearns for the more bountiful pleasures of her family home. Bergman writes himself into the proceedings as a mewling infant. The current three-hour theatrical version of Best Intentions (original title: Den Goda Viljan) was simultaneously prepared as a six-hour TV miniseries, which ran in Europe, Scandanavia, and Japan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide