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BERLINALE 2018 Market / Sweden

SF International brings a top Swedish film to the EFM

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- The Sunny Side, which has racked up over one million admissions, is taking aim at an international audience, while the Swedish sales agent is investing in Nordic family hits

SF International brings a top Swedish film to the EFM
The Sunny Side by Felix and Måns Herngren

Felix and Måns Herngren’s comedy The Sunny Side [+see also:
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was without a doubt the most popular Swedish movie of 2017 and one of the most successful Scandinavian films, too. With over one million admissions in Sweden as well as 200,000 tickets sold in Norway and Finland (see the news), The Sunny Side will be one of SF International’s headliners for the upcoming European Film Market (15-23 February) at the Berlin Film Festival.

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The international sales agent, which is part of SF Studios, one of the biggest distributors in the Nordic countries, will present the film at a closed market screening in order to introduce it to a wider audience. The Sunny Side is a spin-off of the TV series Solsidan, which follows the complicated themes of parenthood and awkward relationships, and was extremely successful in Scandinavia.

SF International will primarily be investing in family films coming from the region. Some of them were also local hits, like I Am William [+see also:
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, directed by Jonas Elmer, which will have a market screening and was released before Christmas in Denmark, racking up over 70,000 admissions so far. The film is an adaptation of the children’s book of the same name written by Kim Fupz Aakeson – who also penned the script – and follows 11-year-old William, who lives with his Uncle Nils. When his uncle gets into trouble due to a gambling debt, William has to stand up and find a way to save him; at the same time, he has to deal with his own three school bullies and his crush on Viola.

One of the Finnish hits is another children’s book adaptation, Hayflower, Quiltshoe and the Rubens Brothers [+see also:
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, directed by Anna Dahlman and written by Sinikka Nopola and Tiina Nopola, which will also have a closed screening. The rest of the family-film selection includes two instalments in the “Iqbal” series, Iqbal Farooq & the Secret Recipe [+see also:
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 and Iqbal & the Superchip [+see also:
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, which were released in 2015 and 2016 in Denmark, respectively, as well as the Norwegian titles Casper and Emma at the Theatre [+see also:
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 and Casper and Emma Go Treasure Hunting [+see also:
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.

On its pre-sales slate, SF International will be showcasing some eagerly awaited projects, starting with an adaptation of the Fredrik Backman bestseller Britt-Marie Was Here, directed by Tuva Novotny and starring Pernilla August (see the news), which hopes to attain the same level of success as A Man Called Ove [+see also:
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 saw two years ago. Another high-profile project is the highly anticipated epic Norwegian biopic Amundsen [+see also:
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, directed by Espen Sandberg, which will depict the attempts of Norwegian Arctic explorer Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (1872-1928) to be the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911.

Finally, the disaster-thriller The Unthinkable (Den blomstertid nu kommer) (see the news), which piqued a huge amount of interest on account of both its Kickstarter campaign and the support it received from its fans, directed by Swedish collective Crazy Pictures, is part of SF International’s pre-sales line-up. The film has already secured a mid-summer release locally, but will certainly be of interest to an international audience, thanks to its subject matter and its 330 CGI effects.

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