19/11/2014 - Mikael Marcimain’s Stockholm Film Festival opener continues travelling; Canadian Mommy collected the Silver Audience Award at the gathering

Swedish director Mikael Marcimain’s sophomore feature, Gentlemen [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which opened the 25th Stockholm International Film Festival earlier this month (5 November), has been licensed to the US (Magnolia) and the UK (Artificial Eye) by Paris-based international sales agency Wild Bunch.

The adaptation of Swedish author Klas Östergren’s 1980 novel, set in post-World War 2 Stockholm complete with jazz music, poetry, hidden treasures and espionage, and starring David Dencik, Ruth Vega Fernandez, Sverrir Gudnason and David Fukamachi Rengfors, was also purchased by Lumiere for the Benelux. “It is encouraging that both the US and the UK will release the film, and that Östergren’s crowd is spreading across the borders,” said Marcimain.

Launched as a Special Presentation – ”high-profile premieres from the world’s leading filmmakers” – at the Toronto International Film Festival, Gentlemen has most definitely entered the international festival circuit: the next stop will be Italy’s Torino Film Festival from 21-29 November. It will be released domestically on 5 December by Svensk Filmindustri.

A total of 8,000 festival visitors participated in the vote to choose this year’s best film, and they gave the Silver Audience Award to Canadian director Xavier Dolan’s Mommy. Having screened in competition at Cannes, the Anne Dorval starrer shared the Jury Prize with French director Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], and it also won the International Cinephile Society’s Palme d’Or. The movie will be released in Sweden on 9 January 2015 by NonStop Entertainment.

Among the ten Nordic works in progress presented during the festival’s Industry Days (12-15 November), Swedish director Levan Akin’s The Circle was the focus of most of the interest. Based on part one of Swedish authors Sara Bergmark Elfgren and Mats Strandberg’s award-winning trilogy, it was originally shelved, then revived by a new company, RMV, set up by Benny Andersson (formerly of ABBA) and his son, Ludvig Andersson.

Scripted by Akin and Elfgren – and scored by Andersson – The Circle follows six teenage girls, drawn to an abandoned park by a mysterious power: they are a group of witches, chosen to save the world from evil. Also produced by Cecilia Norman Mardell, it will be released by Buena Vista International Sweden on 18 February 2015. Akin’s feature debut, Certain People (2011), won the Best Actress Award (for Yohanna Idha) at the Stockholm gathering.