19/09/2011

Swedish director Babar Najafi’s Easy Money II - the sequel to Daniel Espinosa’s 2010 thriller Easy Money [+see also:
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film profile] – scooped €1.1 million and the largest share of the €3.4 million production funding that the Swedish Film Institute has allocated for five new local features.

Starring Joel Kunnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic and Fares Fares, it will be the first of two follow-ups to the local bestseller – 600,000 tickets – based on Swedish lawyer-turned-author Jens Lapidus’s Stockholm Noir Trilogy, Never Fuck Up and an unfinished novel.

Scripted by Maria Karlsson and Peter Birro, the continuing stories of JW, Jorge and the other characters will be produced by Fredrik Wikström for Tre Vänner Produktion. Filming began in August and TrustNordisk will handle international sales.

Also among the top scorers are Swedish director Staffan Lindberg’s romantic comedy, Once Upon a Time in Phuket starring Peter Magnusson, Susanne Thorsen and Jenny Skavlan, which received €800,000 support as a Stella Nova Film production.

The project reunites Lindberg, scriptwriter Peter Magnusson and producer Lena Rehnberg after A Midsummer Of Love [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which took more than 500,000 admissions domestically, in a story of a life-coach who goes to Thailand to fullfil his dreams as a writer.

Danish-Swedish director Kathrine Windfeld’s Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation – the first of three features reviving Swedish author Jan Guillou’s secret agent Carl Hamilton, now played by Mikael Persbrandt – was backed with €700,000.

After Hamilton revealed the existence of illegal arms dealers at top European government level from Guillou’s 1989 novel, Swedish producer Johan Mardell and Pampas Produktion made In Her Majesty’s Service (1994) and But Not If It Concerns Your Daughter (2008).

25 years after Swedish Minister of State Olof Palme was gunned down in the streets of Stockholm – on Feb 28, 1986 – Swedish directors Maud Nycancer and Kristina Lindström are set to make a documentary on ”a man who changed history”.

With €300,000 state funding, St Paul’s Film’s Fredrik Heinig and Mattias Nohrborg will produce their depiction of life and times in the Sweden that the controversial politician helped to create - and the night that traumatised the country.