Maria Lundquist Movies

Filmmaker Ruben Ostlund offers five stories of how human behavior can be interpreted in different ways by different people in this omnibus feature from Sweden. A bus driver (Henrik Vikman) who has pulled over for a routine rest stop discovers someone has damaged a curtain in the bus's washroom, and he decides that his all passengers will have to wait until the guilty party is willing to step forward and confess. A man named Leffe (Leif Edlund Johansson) persuades his friends to help him play a prank on his friend Olle Olle Lijas, though to some it looks less like a joke and more like homosexual rape. Two teenage girls pose for their digital camera, play-acting at soft-core erotica in a manner that could pass as the real thing to the casual observer. A young boy (Villmar Bjorkman) is having a birthday party where his parents have set up a fireworks display; he's injured when one of the explosives misfires, but he's afraid of spoiling the day by telling anyone he's been hurt. And when a teacher learns that a fellow faculty member has been abusing one of their students, she uses a psychological experiment in class to bring the truth to light. De Ofrivilliga (aka Involuntary) was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard program at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A shameful chapter in Swedish history is brought to light in this powerful drama. In 1934, Sweden instituted a law that permitted authorities to require the sterilization of people considered to be unfit to have children. While the official justification for the regulation was to prevent the spread of inherited disease, in many cases young women who were from poor families, were thought to be promiscuous or were believed to have low IQ's found themselves placed in state institution where they were forced to have their tubes tied. In 1951, Gertrud (Julia Hogberg) is a naïve teenager from a large family who is sent to a state home for the retarded. Gertrud doesn't fully understand why she is there or what being sterilized means, but many of her fellow inmates do -- one is living with epilepsy, some come from poverty-stricken backgrounds, while others are mentally ill. All the young women are told they will remain in the home until they agree to be sterilized, and Getrud begins to feel it's a fair trade for being able to return home. However, things take a dramatic turn when she falls in love with one of the groundskeepers, Axel (Christoffer Svensson), and she finds she's become pregnant. Den Nya Manniskan (aka The New Man) was inspired by actual events that occurred under Sweden's forced sterilization laws, which remained on the books until 1976. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The plight of displaced Finnish children sent to Sweden and Denmark to escape the horrors of World War II are explored in director Klaus Härö's tale of a young boy failing to adapt to his strange, and sometimes harsh, new surroundings. Following the death of his father, nine-year-old Eero (Topi Majaniemi) is sent by his mother to live with a foster family in rural Sweden for the duration of the war. Eero is begrudgingly accepted by a surrogate mother who had been hoping for a young girl to help with the chores, and he's mocked by his classmates for his frightened reaction to passing planes. Eero's already troubled childhood is further complicated when his resentful foster mother takes it upon herself to act as a filter for his mother's incoming letters. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi