15/04/2014 - Pernilla August and Lone Scherfig have joined forces for the third screen adaption of Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg’s 1912 novel

Four years after her feature debut, Beyond [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which won her – among others – three Guldbagge Awards, Swedish actress-turned-director Pernilla August is gearing up for her next film, The Serious Game [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Karin Franz Körlof
film profile].

In between playing local and international roles, most recently taking on the lead in Swedish director Mikael Marcimain’s Gentlemen, she has also been the main director of Danish pubcaster DR’s TV series The Legacy, which (judging from sales at MIPTV in Cannes on 13-16 April) is about to become a bigger success than The Killing and Borgen.

Danish director Lone Scherfig, whose UK drama-thriller Posh, starring Natalie Dormer and Douglas Booth, will open this autumn, has scripted the adaptation of Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg’s 1912 novel for August, who will be the third filmmaker to transfer it to the big screen.

Swedish director Rune Carlsten made the 1945 version, with Viveca Lindfors and John Ekman in the lead roles; then, in 1977, Norwegian director Anja Breien made a Swedish-Norwegian co-production, Games of Love and Loneliness, starring Lil Terselius and Stefan Ekman, which won two Guldbagges.

The Serious Game is the turn-of-the-century story of a young couple, Lydia and Arvid, who meet and fall madly in love, yet separate and marry other people. Ten years later, they come across each other again and begin an affair, which has some unexpected consequences on their lives.

Already supported by the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian Film Institutes, the Nordisk Film & TV Fond and Swedish regional film centre Film i Väst, the project will be staged by Swedish producer Patrik Andersson for B-Reel, Nordisk Film and Hungary’s Proton Cinema. The film will shoot in Stockholm, Trollhättan and Budapest.