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Trespassing Bergman for Venice, and Sex, Drugs and Taxation for Toronto

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- Sweden sends We Are the Best! and the feature-length version of Bergman’s Video to Venice, while Denmark is represented by Sex, Drugs and Taxation and Norway by Pioneer in Toronto

Trespassing Bergman for Venice, and Sex, Drugs and Taxation for Toronto

Celebrating its own 50th and the Venice International Film Festival’s 70th anniversary, the Swedish Film Institute is “extremely pleased to have three films selected for Venice – one about Ingmar Bergman (photo), and two by contemporary filmmakers: Lukas Moodysson, one of our time’s greatest directors, and Anna Odell, a newcomer,” said the institute’s managing director Anna Serner.

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Moodysson’s We Are the Best! [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
will be screened in Venice’s Orizzonti competition (August 28-September 7 - see news), and later as a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival (September 5-15); Hynek Pallas and Jane Magnusson’s Trespassing Bergman is on show in the Venice Classics’ section, while Odell’s The Reunion will have its world premiere in the Venice Critics’ Week.

The Bergman documentary is the feature-length cut of the 6x60minute television series Bergman’s Video, in which international directors including Woody Allen, Robert de Niro, Michael Haneke, Ang Lee, Lars von Trier, Takeshi Kitano, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese discuss themes from his films such as fear, silence, comedy, death, adventure and outsiders.

The Reunion, Odell’s first feature – she is also an artist - describes a class reunion, with a twist, after 20 years: what happens when old hierarchies and truths are unexpectedly questioned? The film was produced by Mathilde Dedye, for French Quarter Film. – A Swedish-Danish co-production, Swedish director Anna Eborn’s full-length documentary Pine Ridge [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, about everyday life in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation, from Katjas Adomeit’s Adomeit Film, will be screened out-of-competition.

Also known for their collaboration with US director Sofia Coppola, French electronica duo Air has delivered the musical score for Norwegian director Erik Skjoldbjærg’s oil rush thriller, Pioneer [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, for which the Toronto International Film Festival will give a Special Presentation. Norwegian actor Aksel Henie (Headhunters [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
) plays the lead in the Friland Film production, which will also open the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund on August 15, before its general release on August 30 through Nordisk Film Distribusjon.

Toronto has also picked Danish director Christoffer Boe's Sex, Drugs and Taxation for its Vanguard sidebar, challenging mainstream cinema with provocative and offbeat films. A biopic of Danish lawyer Mogens Glistrup, a radical libertarian, and the hedonist capitalist Simon Spies, the film, scripted by Boe with Simon Pasternak and starring Nicolas Bro and Pilou Asbæk, was produced by Tine Grew Pfeiffer and Caroline Schlüter Bingestam for Alphaville Pictures; Nordisk Film Biografdistribution will launch it domestically on August 29.

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