29/08/2002 - The screening of Swedish director, Lukas Moodysson's Lilja 4-Ever. A poetic and heartbreaking story of female prostitution in Europe

You see them on every corner of every European street; young women from Eastern Europe selling their bodies to “respectable” family men in search of extramarital excitement. Sex slaves who escaped from poverty only to find themselves prisoners of totally unscrupulous men.
Swedish director, Lukas Moodysson found inspiration for his third feature film, Lilja 4-ever, from the real-life story of a sixteen-year –old Russian girl. Produced by Menfis Film, Lilja 4-Ever was selected for competition at Venice 59 and is the ideal follow-up to Moodysson’s debut feature about Swedish adolescents living in the suburbs, Fucking Amal. Lilja is the tragic heroine of this story and she lives in a dreary town in the former Soviet Union. Deserted by her mother, Lilia ends up living by her wits on the streets, and gives herself Dutch courage and dulls her senses by sniffing glue before selling her body. One day she meets a smooth talking young man who promises to “take her away from all this” to a better life together in Malmo, southern Sweden. The fairytale cracks when Lilia realises she must now sell her body indiscriminately to all comers.

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The youthful Moodysson uses poetic imagery as well as the usual stock situations associated with cinéma verité in accusing his homeland, one of the world’s most highly evolved countries in terms of social rights and development, of passive acceptance of a squalid slave market of the 3rd Millennium on its doorstep.
Moodysson’s heroine is a formidable young talent called Oksana Akinshana, whom audiences may remember from Sergei Bodrov’s 2001 feature entitled Sisters, a huge success in Russia. Just as awe-inspiring is 13-year-old Artiom Bogucharskij, who plays Volodya, Lilja’s one true friend and, after his suicide, her beautiful white-robed Guardian Angel.

(Translated from Italian)