Mother, Couch, the Niclas Larsson-directed film, took the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the Göteborg Film Festival. The film was awarded Sek 400,000, which is about $38,000.
The film stars Ewan McGregor, who had also received an honorary Dragon Award during 47th edition of the festival.
Mother, Couch made its debut at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. The debut film by Larsson is based on Swedish author Jerker Virdborg’s novel Mamma i soffa, a story of three children who are brought together when their mother refuses to move from a couch in a furniture store.
Other winners at Göteborg included Oona Airola’s Best Acting award for The Missile, with Juan Sarmiento G. taking the award for cinematography and Nikolaj Arcel’s The Promised Land taking the Audience Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film.
Full list of winners Best Nordic Film
Mother, Couch
Best Acting
Oona Airola...
The film stars Ewan McGregor, who had also received an honorary Dragon Award during 47th edition of the festival.
Mother, Couch made its debut at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. The debut film by Larsson is based on Swedish author Jerker Virdborg’s novel Mamma i soffa, a story of three children who are brought together when their mother refuses to move from a couch in a furniture store.
Other winners at Göteborg included Oona Airola’s Best Acting award for The Missile, with Juan Sarmiento G. taking the award for cinematography and Nikolaj Arcel’s The Promised Land taking the Audience Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film.
Full list of winners Best Nordic Film
Mother, Couch
Best Acting
Oona Airola...
- 2/4/2024
- by Armando Tinoco
- Deadline Film + TV
A filmmaker with an affinity for the dark, Daniel Espinosa caught international attention with 2010 Swedish thriller “Easy Money.” Hollywood was immediately and understandably intrigued by his capacity to make us care about shady criminal types, and for his part, the Chilean-born, Sweden-based director couldn’t resist the lure of making an American studio movie. Or three. Alas, each paycheck took Espinosa farther from his core strength: finding the humanity in morally compromised characters. Now, in a hard swing from ill-advised snabba cash project “Morbius” in 2022, “Madame Luna” can be seen either as penance or simply a return to form. Either way, this tense, tragic contemporary immigrant drama makes infinitely better use of his instincts.
Where Espinosa’s past four credits allowed him to work with an enviable roster of English-speaking stars — Denzel Washington, Tom Hardy, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jared Leto — this smaller, more sociological character study gives him a chance...
Where Espinosa’s past four credits allowed him to work with an enviable roster of English-speaking stars — Denzel Washington, Tom Hardy, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jared Leto — this smaller, more sociological character study gives him a chance...
- 2/4/2024
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Niclas Larsson’s “Mother, Couch” was awarded the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at Goteborg, taking home the considerable amount of Sek 400,000.
Led by Ewan McGregor – this year’s recipient of the Honorary Dragon Award – the U.S.-Swedish-Danish co-production also features Ellen Burstyn and “Bones and All” breakout Taylor Russell, making it one of the starriest Goteborg winners in recent years.
“My therapist was wrong! I pitched him this idea a few years ago and he said: ‘Don’t do it.’ I am from here and this festival has meant the world to me. Standing on this stage is a bit surreal,” said Larsson.
Jurors Lena Endre, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, William Spetz, Tonia Noyabrova and Anna Novion appreciated the way it shows “how difficult it is to let go of the past, accept loss and finally embrace the future.” They praised “original and bold storytelling, with a lot of humor,...
Led by Ewan McGregor – this year’s recipient of the Honorary Dragon Award – the U.S.-Swedish-Danish co-production also features Ellen Burstyn and “Bones and All” breakout Taylor Russell, making it one of the starriest Goteborg winners in recent years.
“My therapist was wrong! I pitched him this idea a few years ago and he said: ‘Don’t do it.’ I am from here and this festival has meant the world to me. Standing on this stage is a bit surreal,” said Larsson.
Jurors Lena Endre, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, William Spetz, Tonia Noyabrova and Anna Novion appreciated the way it shows “how difficult it is to let go of the past, accept loss and finally embrace the future.” They praised “original and bold storytelling, with a lot of humor,...
- 2/3/2024
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Niclas Larsson’s Mother, Couch took the Dragon award for best Nordic film at Goteborg Film Festival, which held its closing ceremony this evening.
The Swedish-us drama received the 400,000 Sek prize from the five-person jury, consisting of actors Lena Endre and William Spetz, and directors Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Tonia Noyabrova and Anna Novion.
Scroll down for the full list of winners
The jury chose the film for its “original and bold storytelling with a lot of humour; with the use of creative cinematography and sharp and witty dialogue.”
Mother, Couch centres on three children who are brought together when their mother...
The Swedish-us drama received the 400,000 Sek prize from the five-person jury, consisting of actors Lena Endre and William Spetz, and directors Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Tonia Noyabrova and Anna Novion.
Scroll down for the full list of winners
The jury chose the film for its “original and bold storytelling with a lot of humour; with the use of creative cinematography and sharp and witty dialogue.”
Mother, Couch centres on three children who are brought together when their mother...
- 2/3/2024
- ScreenDaily
Momento Film, the leading Swedish banner founded by David Herdies (“Winter Buoy”) and Michael Krotkiewski (“Bellum — The Daemon Of War”), is boasting a slate of projects including the documentaries “Leaving Jesus” and “The Underdog,” as well as Simón Mesa Soto’s “A Poet.”
While at Cannes, the banner also started teasing one of its biggest project so far, “The Swedish Torpedo,” Frida Kempff (“Winter Buoy”)’s period film inspired by the life of Sally Bauer, the first Scandinavian to swim across the English Channel in 1939. “The Swedish Torpedo” will start shooting in August with a topnotch cast led by Josefin Neldén, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, as well as Lisa Carlehed (“The Emigrants”).
Co-produced by Sweden, Estonia, Belgium and England, the film opens in 1939, as Europe is on the brink of war. Sally, a 30-year-old single mom, dreams of being the first European woman to cross the English Channel. While society and...
While at Cannes, the banner also started teasing one of its biggest project so far, “The Swedish Torpedo,” Frida Kempff (“Winter Buoy”)’s period film inspired by the life of Sally Bauer, the first Scandinavian to swim across the English Channel in 1939. “The Swedish Torpedo” will start shooting in August with a topnotch cast led by Josefin Neldén, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, as well as Lisa Carlehed (“The Emigrants”).
Co-produced by Sweden, Estonia, Belgium and England, the film opens in 1939, as Europe is on the brink of war. Sally, a 30-year-old single mom, dreams of being the first European woman to cross the English Channel. While society and...
- 5/31/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Simón Mesa Soto’s “Amparo,” which world premiered Monday in Cannes’ Critics’ Week, is both the portrait of its complex protagonist of the same name and a frightening thriller that over two days follows a desperate mother trying to save her son from forced military service. Mesa Soto, winner of the Palme d’Or for short film with “Leidi” in 2014, spoke to Variety about his feature.
Set in Colombia in the late 1990s, an era of turmoil for the country whose consequences are deeply entrenched in today’s social unrest, Mesa Soto sharply observes a corrupt and patriarchal system through the experience of one of so many mother’s — including the director’s own — who powerlessly see how their children are drafted for a seemingly never ending war, a war that as one of the soldiers acknowledges “is fought by the poor.”
Lensed by Juan Sarmiento G., the clean cut...
Set in Colombia in the late 1990s, an era of turmoil for the country whose consequences are deeply entrenched in today’s social unrest, Mesa Soto sharply observes a corrupt and patriarchal system through the experience of one of so many mother’s — including the director’s own — who powerlessly see how their children are drafted for a seemingly never ending war, a war that as one of the soldiers acknowledges “is fought by the poor.”
Lensed by Juan Sarmiento G., the clean cut...
- 7/12/2021
- by Emiliano Granada
- Variety Film + TV
Swedish documentary specialist Momento Film, the company behind “Tiny Tim: King for a Day” and Cph:Forum work in progress “Stories from the Debris,” is ramping up its narrative feature film output.
A decade after he founded his outfit, helmer/producer David Herdies has propelled Momento Film among Sweden’s top creators of cutting-edge documentaries and shorts. Award-winning pics to his credit include “Ouaga Girls” (2017), “Hamada” (2018), “Transnistra” (2019), and most recently Johan von Sydow’s docu biopic “Tiny Tim: King for a Day,” currently touring the U.S., courtesy of Juno Films. Herdies also produced and co-helmed with George Götmark the buzzed about Visions du Réel competition entry “Bellum: The Daemon of War,” and is spotlighting Jennifer Rainsford’s works in progress documentary “Stories from the Debris” at this week’s Cph:forum, industry sidebar to Denmark’s Cph:dox fest.
While keeping a solid foundation in documentary films, Herdies — a former European Film...
A decade after he founded his outfit, helmer/producer David Herdies has propelled Momento Film among Sweden’s top creators of cutting-edge documentaries and shorts. Award-winning pics to his credit include “Ouaga Girls” (2017), “Hamada” (2018), “Transnistra” (2019), and most recently Johan von Sydow’s docu biopic “Tiny Tim: King for a Day,” currently touring the U.S., courtesy of Juno Films. Herdies also produced and co-helmed with George Götmark the buzzed about Visions du Réel competition entry “Bellum: The Daemon of War,” and is spotlighting Jennifer Rainsford’s works in progress documentary “Stories from the Debris” at this week’s Cph:forum, industry sidebar to Denmark’s Cph:dox fest.
While keeping a solid foundation in documentary films, Herdies — a former European Film...
- 4/28/2021
- by Annika Pham
- Variety Film + TV
“Deliver me from evil,” murmurs fisherman José (Arley De Jesús Carvallido Lobo) into clasped hands before he puts on his hat, steps into his canoe and sets off down the Magdalena River, delivering himself directly into evil. The placid waterway that is the thematic and geographical spine of writer-director Nicolás Rincón Gille’s unfeasibly gripping, slow-scorching feature debut flows through Colombia’s Bolivar region, and back in 2002, when “Valley of Souls” is set, it bore witness to untold barbarism as part of the nation’s drawn-out internal conflict. Gille imagines one such instance of arbitrary violence — tiny in the grand scheme of things — and creates from it a film of astonishing power, as the simple story of José’s quest to find the bodies of his murdered sons quietly floods its banks to become a mythic act of memorialization.
José, having hidden out for the night rather than cross...
José, having hidden out for the night rather than cross...
- 10/6/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
The Un Certain Regard winner found himself caught up in Algeria’s revolution earlier this year
Karim Aïnouz has revealed fresh details of his upcoming Algerian revolution documentary Nardjes, Algiers, March 2019, a rough cut of which screens in the Final Cut in Venice post-production workshop on Sunday (Sept 1).
The work plunges viewers into the heart of street demonstrations that led to the resignation of Algeria’s long-time, authoritarian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April through a day in the life of a young female activist whose family fought in the original Algerian revolution of 1954-1962.
The Brazilian, Berlin-based filmmaker recounts how...
Karim Aïnouz has revealed fresh details of his upcoming Algerian revolution documentary Nardjes, Algiers, March 2019, a rough cut of which screens in the Final Cut in Venice post-production workshop on Sunday (Sept 1).
The work plunges viewers into the heart of street demonstrations that led to the resignation of Algeria’s long-time, authoritarian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April through a day in the life of a young female activist whose family fought in the original Algerian revolution of 1954-1962.
The Brazilian, Berlin-based filmmaker recounts how...
- 8/31/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
There were several prizes for German co-productions at the Cannes Film Festival (14 - 25 May 2014) this year: Winter Sleep (Tr/De/Fr, Bredok Film Production) won the Palm d'Or . The film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan also received the Fipresci Prize from the international film critics. Another co-production with German participation, Le Meraviglie by Alice Rohrwacher (It/Ch/De, Pola Pandora), was awarded the Grand Prix. White God by Kornél Mundruczó (Hu/De/Se, Pola Pandora) received the main award in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. Pola Pandora, the German production company serving as a partner on both films, was co-founded by the recently departed Karl Baumgartner, a pioneer of European arthouse cinema. Wim Wenders and his co-director Juliano Ribeiro Salgado received the Special Prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar for the French production The Salt of the Earth. Juan Sarmiento G. was responsible for the camerawork on Leidi, the Golden Palm for Short Films. He is now living and working in Berlin after having studied at the Hff Potsdam-Babelsberg.
The cinema was filled to capacity at the world premiere of the Next Generation Short Tiger 2014 program of shorts on Sunday, 18 May 2014. Around 250 guests came to the Star Cinema where the directors and producers of the 14 selected shorts presented their works to an audience of international professionals. The director and Oscar-winner® Caroline Link, who was a member of the jury, was also present at the premiere in Cannes. Next Generation Short Tiger 2014 is organized by German Films and the German Federal Film Board (Ffa). After the screening, the audience – which included representatives of international festivals, journalists, producers and buyers, rewarded the achievements of the German short film talents with long and enthusiastic applause.
Mariette Rissenbeek, managing director of German Films: "We are delighted that this year again saw such a large interest from people wanting to get to know the up-and-coming generation of German filmmakers at the Next Generation Short Tiger premiere. Everything was represented – from the Western through drama, animation, thriller, documentary and also comedy – and all of this was of a very high quality." The first festival invitations had already started coming in after the screening in Cannes. The Next Generation Short Tiger 2014 program will be shown in the upcoming months as part of the Festivals of German Films which are organized by German Films in Madrid, New York, Buenos Aires, Paris and Moscow.
This year, the market screenings organized by German Films under the banner of " New German Films in Cannes " at Cannes' Marché du Film presented 35 new German films. The screenings were well received by the professional visitors. A popular and highly regarded meeting place – along with the German Pavilion in the International Village – proved once again to be the German Reception in honor of German cinema and the films with German participation at the festival.
Over 850 guests took the opportunity to come together in a convivial atmosphere on La Plage - Majestic Barrière on Saturday, 17 May 2014. The State Minister for Culture, Prof. Monika Grütters, made the opening speech on the occasion of her first visit to Cannes. The producers Eva Blondiau (Torn), Michael Eckelt (That Lovely Girl / Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsallem), Alfred Hürmer (Maps to the Stars), Thanassis Karathanos (Clouds of Sils Maria) and Titus Kreyenberg (Bridges of Sarajevo), the directors Elmar Imanov and Engin Kundag (Torn), Slomi Elkabetz (Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsallem) and Jessica Hausner (Amour Fou) as well as the actors Christian Friedel and Stefan Großmann (Amour Fou) were among those attending from the delegations of the German co-productions showing at the festival. The guests included, among others, representatives of festivals from Moscow, Montreal, Palm Springs, Locarno and São Paulo, the actors Stefan Konarske and Maxim Mehmet, the directors Margarethe von Trotta, Caroline Link, Dietrich Brüggemann, Veit Helmer and Marco Kreuzpaintner, author Katja Eichinger as well as international and national distributors, producers and funders.
The cinema was filled to capacity at the world premiere of the Next Generation Short Tiger 2014 program of shorts on Sunday, 18 May 2014. Around 250 guests came to the Star Cinema where the directors and producers of the 14 selected shorts presented their works to an audience of international professionals. The director and Oscar-winner® Caroline Link, who was a member of the jury, was also present at the premiere in Cannes. Next Generation Short Tiger 2014 is organized by German Films and the German Federal Film Board (Ffa). After the screening, the audience – which included representatives of international festivals, journalists, producers and buyers, rewarded the achievements of the German short film talents with long and enthusiastic applause.
Mariette Rissenbeek, managing director of German Films: "We are delighted that this year again saw such a large interest from people wanting to get to know the up-and-coming generation of German filmmakers at the Next Generation Short Tiger premiere. Everything was represented – from the Western through drama, animation, thriller, documentary and also comedy – and all of this was of a very high quality." The first festival invitations had already started coming in after the screening in Cannes. The Next Generation Short Tiger 2014 program will be shown in the upcoming months as part of the Festivals of German Films which are organized by German Films in Madrid, New York, Buenos Aires, Paris and Moscow.
This year, the market screenings organized by German Films under the banner of " New German Films in Cannes " at Cannes' Marché du Film presented 35 new German films. The screenings were well received by the professional visitors. A popular and highly regarded meeting place – along with the German Pavilion in the International Village – proved once again to be the German Reception in honor of German cinema and the films with German participation at the festival.
Over 850 guests took the opportunity to come together in a convivial atmosphere on La Plage - Majestic Barrière on Saturday, 17 May 2014. The State Minister for Culture, Prof. Monika Grütters, made the opening speech on the occasion of her first visit to Cannes. The producers Eva Blondiau (Torn), Michael Eckelt (That Lovely Girl / Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsallem), Alfred Hürmer (Maps to the Stars), Thanassis Karathanos (Clouds of Sils Maria) and Titus Kreyenberg (Bridges of Sarajevo), the directors Elmar Imanov and Engin Kundag (Torn), Slomi Elkabetz (Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsallem) and Jessica Hausner (Amour Fou) as well as the actors Christian Friedel and Stefan Großmann (Amour Fou) were among those attending from the delegations of the German co-productions showing at the festival. The guests included, among others, representatives of festivals from Moscow, Montreal, Palm Springs, Locarno and São Paulo, the actors Stefan Konarske and Maxim Mehmet, the directors Margarethe von Trotta, Caroline Link, Dietrich Brüggemann, Veit Helmer and Marco Kreuzpaintner, author Katja Eichinger as well as international and national distributors, producers and funders.
- 6/7/2014
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
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