Debuts
Cinema arrived in Sweden at the end of the 19th century, with a first screening in Malmö in 1896. Ernest Florman (1862-1952), a photographer from Stockholm, is considered the first filmmaker in Swedish history with The Arrival of the King of Siam in Stockholm, a short sequence filmed on July 13, 1897.
The producer Charles Magnusson, and the directors Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller - the one who discovered the divine Garbo - launched the Swedish silent cinema, through the company Svenska Biografteatern, created in 1907. The Phantom Carriage (1921), a fantasy drama by Sjöström, is a fine example of this golden age.
Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish master
Born in Uppsala in 1918, the film and theater director is without question THE monument of Swedish national cinema. At the age of 10, he discovered his vocation thanks to a magic lantern, a process of projection of animated images developed in the 17th century and commonly used as a toy in the 19th century, with which he already staged stories of his own invention. He then had a prolific career, with no less than forty works to his credit, including: The Seventh Seal (1957), On the Threshold of Life (1958), Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972), Scenes from Married Life (1973), Fanny and Alexander (1982). His filmography is covered with several themes, such as the meaning of life, good and evil, God, the incommunicability of the couple ... Marked by his conflicting relationship with his parents, he tirelessly draws inspiration from his childhood memories. In 2002, Bergman donated his archives to the Swedish Film Institute. This collection of documents is managed by the Foundation that bears his name.
Post-war period
Without denying the genius of the master Bergman, a new generation of filmmakers wants to turn the page of classical cinema and impose itself by a certain technical creativity. Bo Widerberg is part of this revival. A writer turned filmmaker, he wrote novels and short stories in the 1950s, including The Green Dragon, which he made into a film in 1966. His early works were inspired by realism, while his later films such as Ådalen 31 (1963), Joe Hill (1971) and Elvira Madigan (1967) adopted a more lyrical tone.
Another figure of the 1960s, director Jan Troell began his career as a cinematographer on Widerberg's films. His major works, Utvandrarna (1971) (The Emigrants) and its sequel Nybyggarna (1972) (The New World), are adapted from the novels of the same name by the writer Vilhelm Moberg, and follow the journey of a peasant family from the province of Småland to Minnesota in the middle of the 19th century.
New generation
The generation of filmmakers born in the 1970s stages a critique of Swedish society, between the tragic and the comic, and at times, the divisive. Josef Fares is known for his comedy Jalla! Jalla ! (2000). A box office and critical success, it tells the story of Roro, played by his brother, the Lebanese-Swedish actor Fares Fares, who is plagued by doubts when his white Swedish girlfriend asks to meet his in-laws.
With a cruel and satirical look at Swedes and our contemporary society in general, Ruben Östlund is certainly the most recognized Swedish filmmaker of his generation. Happy Sweden (2008), Snow Therapy (2014) and The Square (2017) (Palme d'Or at Cannes) unravel the mores and pretenses of white and bourgeois circles. In 2022, he joins the very closed club of filmmakers to have won two Palmes d'or at the Cannes Film Festival with his film Sans filtre. Decidedly adored by the Croisette, he was chosen to preside over the jury of the 76th edition of the festival, in 2023.
Malik Bendjelloul is interested in music and has made several films on Elton John, Rod Stewart, Björk and Kraftwerk. He received the Oscar for best documentary in 2013 for Searching for Sugar Man, which retraced the atypical career of the American singer Rodriguez.
The series
Swedish series are numerous and enjoy a fine reputation abroad. Writer Stieg Larsson's Millennium crime trilogy, adapted in Sweden from 2009 by Niels Arden Oplev and Daniel Alfredson with actors Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace, and then in the USA from 2011 by David Fincher with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, was a hit at the cinema, so much so that a 6-episode TV series was released in 2010, broadcast by Canal+, with the same Swedish acting duo.
Lars Lundström's Real Humans (2012) has become a classic series about humanoid robots, exported to over 50 countries. Then there's The Bridge (broadcast between 2011 and 2018), Polar Day (2016), Svartsjön (2016), and Jordskott, the Forest of the Missing (2015). On Netflix, the series Love and Anarchy (2020) and Kalifat (2020) filmed in Stockholm, and in 2021 the series The Improbable Assassin of Olof Palme about the murder of the former Swedish Prime Minister, adapted from the novel The Unlikely Murderer.
Some actors and actresses
Since the beginning of the 20th century, actors and actresses from Sweden have made a name for themselves in world cinema. Propelled to Hollywood icon status by American producer Louis B. Mayer, Greta Garbo got her first major role in 1924 in Gösta Berling's The Saga, based on the novel by Selma Lagerlöf. Her major roles include Queen Christine, Grand Hotel, The Lady of the Camellias and Ninotchka.
Actress Ingrid Bergman achieved international success with three films by Alfred Hitchcock: The Doctor's House (1945) Edwardes, The Chained Ones (1946) and The Lovers of Capricorn (1949). She made Stromboli (1950), by Italian director Roberto Rossellini, for whom she left her husband. Her autobiography, Ma vie, recounts her memoirs.
Actor Max von Sydow, after his performance in Bergman's The Seventh Seal , became one of her favorite actors. He also starred in Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror and William Friedkin's The Exorcist.
The Skarsgård family, which has enjoyed a successful career in contemporary cinema, includes father Stellan, Lars Von Trier's favorite actor, for whom he starred in Dogville, Nymphomaniac and Breaking the Waves, and son Alexander, who has been very much in vogue since playing Eric Northman in the True Blood series, as well as Tarzan for David Yates, and who also acted for Lars Von Trier in Melancholia.
Alicia Vikander is a rising star in contemporary cinema. She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl (2015) and is continuing her career with two action films: Jason Bourne in 2016, by Paul Greengrass, with Matt Damon, and Tomb Raider in 2018.
