05/02/2013 - Swedish director Mikael Marcimain will adapt Swedish author Klas Östergren 1980 novel for the screen – one of six new films supported by the Swedish Film Institute

After his first feature Call Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which was inspired by the Swedish brothel scandal in the late 1970s, Swedish director Mikael Marcimain (photo) will adapt Swedish author (and scriptwriter) Klas Östergren’s breakthrough novel Gentlemen (1980) for the screen.

The Swedish Film Institute will contribute €1.2 million production funding for the film, a love story-international thriller set in post-war Europe, a society undergoing changes with jazz, poetry, love and espionage. Fredrik Heinig and Johannes Åhlund will produce for B-Reel Feature Films.

The institute will also support Swedish author Astrid Lindgren’s return to cinema, chipping in €900,000 for Swedish director Per Åhlin’s fully-animated Emil and Ida in Lönneberga, based on two of her characters. From a screenplay by HansÅke Gabrielsson, with a musical score by Georg Riedel, the film will be produced by Lars Blomgren, for Filmlance International, and ready for Christmas.

Swedish director Elisabet Gustafsson is preparing a musical adventure from an original script by Ulf Synnerholm, about a little girl who is looking for the wizard who turned himself into a glass of lemonade and drank himself up. Torbjörn Jansson will stage the production for Filmlance International with €1 million state support.

Swedish director John O Olsson received €600,000 for Viskan Miracles, which he also scripted and will produce for Giraff Film. The film follows Bjarne and Malin, who live on one bank of the Ljungan river, Malin’s father Halvar on the other – Bjarne and Halvar have never met eye-to-eye, due to an old conflict. After 20 years Malin crosses the river to ask Halvar to guarantee for a loan.

Storm in the Andes, a feature-length documentary by Swedish director Mikael Wikström, was backed by €200,000. In 1988 – when Josefin Augusta was born in Sweden – her aunt Augusta died in Peru, where with Abimael Guzman she had started the Shining Path Communist movement and a 20-year war. In Wikström's production for Månharen Film & TV), Josefin goes to Peru in 2010 to find the truth of her aunt.

Finally, the institute’s €3 million subsidy package for features and full-length documentaries included Finnish director Dome Karukoski’s Heart of Lion, a family drama penned by Aleksi Bardy, and co-produced by Sweden’s Anagram Film (Erik Magnusson, Martin Persson), which received €69,000.