Babes and booze - Swedish Film Institute

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28 stoCKholM east siMon KaiJseR da silVa DIRECTOR PRODUCTION INFO P. 61 trainspotting Director Simon Kaijser da Silva has been contemplating his film Stockholm East (Stockholm Östra) for ten years. Now it’s finally set to hit the cinema screens. TExT ALExANDRA SUNDqVIST PHOTO CAROLINE TIBELL A lot of people like to tell us how to live our lives. There are masses of books, magazines and experts giving advice on how to bring up our children, how to tend a garden, how to improve our relationships and our sex lives, or how to make peace with our innermost selves. Not to mention the weight of social convention and the pressures that most of us find impossible to ignore. In Stockholm East, director Simon Kaijser da Silva and screenwriter Pernilla Oljelund point us towards another way of living – one in which love can be as liberating as it can be disruptive and brutal. “We wanted to tell a story in which love doesn’t just add spice to the narrative, and to show that there are no right, or easy, choices. To show that love can blossom where it shouldn’t, outside the norm, and that you need courage to accept it,” says da Silva. The film’S main characters are Johan (Mikael Persbrandt, Everlasting Moments, The Hobbit) and Anna (Iben Hjelje, High Fidelity, The Boss of It All), two people living what appear to be well-ordered lives in apparently perfect homes with their respective partners. The aftermath of an accident throws them together, and a mutual attraction ensues. “When they’re together they build a world which rather serves to protect them from everything that has happened previously. I wanted to portray that situation, to make it hypnotic,” da Silva says. He laughs and looks down into his coffee cup: “You know, some people have described the film as a ‘horror movie for couples’.” Certainly, the storyline is quite bleak, but one in which hope constantly shines through like a beacon in the winter night. “Some people have described the film as a ‘horror movie for couples’” “Most people who have been around the block have experienced something similar. But I won’t hide the fact that the serious theme of the film made it harder to find financial backing.” Stockholm eaSt iS Simon Kaijser da Silva’s feature film debut. His previous work includes television productions for Sveriges Television, such as De halvt dolda (2009) written by the author Jonas Gardell and Pusselbitar (2001), written by the author Pernilla Oljelund. Yet the idea for the feature has been going Mikael Persbrandt and iben hjejle in Stockholm East. round in his head for almost a decade, ever since he first thought of this love story with a difference. “With every year that’s gone by the theme of the film has become more and more relevant to me. In the same period I’ve had children and gone through a divorce. Parallel with this, my own artistic style has developed.” Simon Kaijser da Silva makes no claim for any overtly political message in the film. Instead, he wants his audience to leave the cinema in a mood of introspection. “In an ideal world the film would give people the courage to see themselves for who they really are and what they have. A standard romantic comedy doesn’t really pose such questions. For me, Stockholm East is about the fact that the decisions we make are entirely our own, and that it takes courage to make them. Especially when the choices open to us are so potentially life-changing.” n JOHAN PAULIN
FaCts 41-year-old simon kaijser da silva grew up in Nacka, a suburb of stockholm. much of his work has been for television, including De halvt dolda (2009), Höök (2007) and Pusselbitar (2001). Stockholm East (Stockholm Östra) is his debut feature. 29
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Page 64: NOVEMBER 9-20 2011 THE 22 ND STOCKH

Babes and booze - Swedish Film Institute

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