Svinalängorna

Cast and credits

Synopsis

A happy family on a holiday morning. The young mother, Leena, suddenly receives a phone call warning that her mother has been hospitalized and is in a very serious condition. Against her will, the husband decides to take her to visit the woman, together with their two little daughters. For Leena it is the beginning of a painful inner journey that forces her to recall the forgotten past that she had removed through impressive willpower. Her parents, immigrants from Finland who never really felt at home in Sweden, lived their devastating passion amidst alcohol addiction and violent quarrels, while Leena and her little brother tried to survive as best they could – she did it by winning swimming competitions and taking notes in a little notebook of the meanings of words of her new language, so different from the mother tongue; he retreated into his own world until implosion. For Leena, who has chosen to pursue normality at any cost, lying to herself and to others, this is her last chance to face the dark world she comes from and belongs to.

The director

Discovered by Ingmar Bergman who chose her for Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander) in 1982, ten years later Pernilla August won the Golden Palm for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Den goda viljan (The Best Intentions), a film written by Bergman and directed by her second husband, Bille August. Her work includes Jerusalem (1996), directed by Bille August, and Enskilda samtal (Private Conversations, 1996) by Liv Ullman. She played the role of Shmi Skywalker, mother of Anakin Skywalker in two episodes of the famous Star Wars saga. One of her recent films was Det enda rationella (A Rational Solution) by Jörgen Bergmark, presented at the Venice International Film Critics’ Week in competition in 2009. She has also worked for television and theatre, winning a British Drama Magazine Award for Best Supporting Actress in Hamlet. She has acted in many classic works at the Swedish National Theatre. In 2005 she directed the short film Time-Bomb.