She Monkeys

Last updated
She Monkeys
She-Monkeys-poster.png
Theatrical release poster
Directed byLisa Aschan
Written byJosefine Adolfsson
Lisa Aschan
Produced byHelene Lindholm
Starring Mathilda Paradeiser
Linda Molin
Isabella Lindqvist
CinematographyLinda Wassberg
Edited byKristofer Nordin
Music bySami Sänpäkkilä
Production
company
Atmo
Distributed byTriArt Film
Release dates
  • 31 January 2011 (2011-01-31)(Gothenburg Film Festival)
  • 3 August 2011 (2011-08-03)(France)
  • 2 September 2011 (2011-09-02)(Sweden)
Running time
84 minutes
CountrySweden
LanguageSwedish

She Monkeys (Swedish : Apflickorna) is a 2011 Swedish drama film directed by Lisa Aschan, starring Mathilda Paradeiser, Linda Molin and Isabella Lindqvist. The film focuses on psychological power struggles between two teenage girls engaged in equestrian vaulting. [1]

Contents

Plot

Cast

Production

She Monkeys was produced as part of the Swedish Film Institute's Rookie Project, which provided financial support for which only debuting feature-film directors are eligible. Inspirations for the film included a picture of Shirley Temple and the book Story of the Eye by George Bataille. Casting of the lead actors took four months. The filmmakers needed to find girls who not only could act, but also met the requirements of the physically demanding roles. [1]

Release

The film premiered on 31 January 2011 at the Gothenburg Film Festival. [2] Several festival selections followed, including Berlin where it screened in the section Generation 14Plus, Tribeca and Karlovy Vary. The earliest regular release was in France, where ASC Distribution launched the film on 3 August 2011. [3] The Swedish release is set to 2 September 2011 through TriArt Film. [2]

Reception

Alissa Simon of Variety called the film "one of the most intense and complex feature debuts to come from Sweden since Lukas Moodysson's Show Me Love ", and wrote: "Aschan's provocative visual language links pleasure and pain as she focuses on the arousing nature of unpleasant things. Carefully framed compositions that are near cliche (a father cuddling his young child, a babysitter helping a youngster with tooth brushing) take on fresh significance. ... Just as remarkably, Aschan draws convincing, naturalistic performances from her young non-pro actors while putting them in highly charged situations." [4]

At the Gothenburg Film Festival, She Monkeys received the top competition prize, the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film, with one million kronor in prize money. [5] It also won the festival's FIPRESCI prize. The film received the award for Best Narrative Feature, World Narrative Competition Section at the Tribeca Film Festival. Linda Wassberg won the prize for Best Cinematography at the Transilvania International Film Festival in Romania. [6]

Related Research Articles

<i>Four Shades of Brown</i> 2004 Swedish film

Four Shades of Brown is a 2004 Swedish film written by the comedy group Killinggänget and directed by their member Tomas Alfredson. The film stars Robert Gustafsson, Johan Rheborg, Henrik Schyffert, Jonas Inde, Maria Kulle and Ulf Brunnberg. The film consists of four interwoven stories about life tragedies, each related to fatherhood as the common theme. It was produced by Sveriges Television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gothenburg Film Festival</span> Annual film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden

Göteborg Film Festival (GFF), formerly Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF), known in English as the Gothenburg Film Festival, formerly Gothenburg International Film Festival, is an annual film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden and the largest film event in Scandinavia. When it was launched on February 8, 1979, it showed 17 films on 3 screens and had 3,000 visitors.

<i>Let the Right One In</i> (film) 2008 Swedish romantic horror film

Let the Right One In is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, based on the 2004 novel of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay. The film tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a strange child in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tomas Alfredson</span> Swedish film director (born 1965)

Hans Christian Tomas Alfredson is a Swedish film director who is best known internationally for directing the 2008 vampire film Let the Right One In and 2011 espionage film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Alfredson has received the Guldbagge award for Best Direction twice; in 2005 for Four Shades of Brown, and in 2008 for Let the Right One In.

<i>Involuntary</i> (film) 2008 film by Ruben Östlund

Involuntary is a 2008 Swedish drama film directed by Ruben Östlund, and written by Östlund and Erik Hemmendorff. It is described as "a tragic comedy or comic tragedy", and features five parallel stories with human group behaviour as the common theme. The film is notable for its long takes with no cuts within the scenes. This is related to Östlund's background as a skiing film director, where a cut would only indicate failure. The longest scene lasts for seven minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hisham Zaman</span>

Hisham Zaman is a Norwegian film director and screenwriter of Kurdish origin. He graduated from the Norwegian Film School at Lillehammer in 2004. His films center on the stories and inner dilemmas of characters united by a common refugee experience, exploring human themes such as love, acceptance, sacrifice, revenge, loyalty and honour. He has co-written several of his scripts with the Norwegian crime novelist Kjell Ola Dahl.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruben Östlund</span> Swedish filmmaker (born 1974)

Ruben Östlund is a Swedish filmmaker best known for his satirical black comedy films Force Majeure (2014), The Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022). He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Palmes d'Or, four European Film Awards and nominations for three Academy Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mathilda Paradeiser</span> Swedish actress

Mathilda Emma Paradeiser is a Swedish actress. Mathilda played the lead role in the 2011 award winning Swedish movie Apflickorna. She has also acted in Sveriges Television's (Re)Volt and in 2013 filmed "Frankenstein" in Chicago playing the role of Ingrid.

<i>Finnish Blood Swedish Heart</i> 2012 Finnish film

Finnish Blood Swedish Heart is a 2013 documentary film by Mika Ronkainen about a Finnish father and son revisiting their former home in Sweden. The film won two Jussi Awards in 2014: Best Documentary and Best Music, and the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary Film at the Göteborg Film Festival in February 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victoria Mahoney</span> American actress and filmmaker

Victoria Mahoney is an American actress and filmmaker. Her debut feature was 2011’s Yelling to the Sky.

Katarina Margareta Spång, more known under the name Mimmi Spång, is a Swedish film producer and production manager. She has been involved with and produced several films, notably the Swedish productions Sebbe and Call Girl.

<i>Afterlife</i> (2014 film) 2014 Hungarian film

Afterlife is a 2014 Hungarian comedy film directed by Virág Zomborácz, starring Márton Kristóf and László Gálffi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Aschan</span> Swedish film director and screenwriter

Daria Sofia Elisabeth (Lisa) Aschan is a Swedish film director and screenwriter.

<i>Border</i> (2018 Swedish film) 2018 Swedish fantasy film

Border is a 2018 Swedish fantasy film directed by Ali Abbasi with a screenplay by Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf and John Ajvide Lindqvist based on the short story of the same name by Ajvide Lindqvist from his anthology Let the Old Dreams Die. It won the Un Certain Regard award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, and was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards but was not nominated. However, it was nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

Nikyatu Jusu is an American independent writer, director, producer, editor and assistant professor in film and video at George Mason University. Jusu's works center on the complexities of Black female characters and in particular, displaced, immigrant women in the United States. Her work includes African Booty Scratcher (2007), Flowers (2015), Suicide By Sunlight (2019), and Nanny, which received the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. She has endorsed the use of Generative artificial intelligence in filmmaking and uses the technology in her work.

Josefine Adolfsson is a Swedish author, and film and radio producer. She is known for her 2011 film Apflickorna.

Isabella Eklöf is a Swedish screenwriter and film director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darko Lungulov</span> Serbian-American film director

Darko Lungulov is a Serbian-American film director, screenwriter, and film producer.

<i>My Love Affair with Marriage</i> 2022 film

My Love Affair with Marriage is a 2022 semi-autobiographical adult animated musical comedy-drama film animated, written and directed by Signe Baumane, her second feature following Rocks in My Pockets (2014). The story follows a young woman, Zelma, on her 23-year quest for perfect love and lasting marriage, set against a backdrop of historic events in Eastern Europe. Pressured by Mythology Sirens to be the ideal woman and is unable to free herself from the biology of her own brain, Zelma finds love and loses it multiple times before discovering who she really is. Told from a female point of view, this is a coming-of-age story of love, gender, marriage, abuse, hopes, fantasies, and ultimately, finding a better place for women in society.

Bikechess is a 2024 film written and directed by Assel Aushakimova. The French-Kazakh-Norwegian co-production had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on 9 June 2024, where the film won Best International Narrative Feature.

References

  1. 1 2 Frostberg, Martin; Roger, Susanne (2011-02-06). "'Apflickorna' vann miljonpriset". Filmnyheterna (in Swedish). Swedish Film Institute . Retrieved 2011-06-17.
  2. 1 2 "She Monkeys (2011): Release dates". Swedish Film Database . Swedish Film Institute . Retrieved 2011-06-17.
  3. Lemercier, Fabien (2011-08-05). "Lars, Pedro, Paolo and co in Euro-flavoured summer line-up". Cineuropa. Retrieved 2011-08-05.
  4. Simon, Alissa (2011-02-05). "She Monkeys". Variety . Retrieved 2011-06-17.
  5. Pham, Annika (2011-02-07). "She Monkeys win top Dragon in Göteborg". Cineuropa. Archived from the original on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2011-06-17.
  6. "Apflickorna (2011): Utmärkelser". Swedish Film Database (in Swedish). Swedish Film Institute . Retrieved 2011-06-17.