News

"Join Jonna and Gorilla on their quest!" Viva Pictures has released a new US trailer for a Swedish animated movie called Ape Star, or The Ape Star, which also opens in theaters in Sweden this month. Telling the story of a young orphan girl who meets the perfect parent – that just so happens to be a gorilla. Jonna has lived at the orphanage all her life. One day a Gorilla comes and adopts her. It takes some time for Jonna to get used to her new mother, but just as everything starts becoming good, the local authorities threaten their existence. Featuring the voices of Rebecca Gerstmann as Jonna, Pernilla August as Gorillan, Melinda Kinnaman as Gerd, Stellan Skarsgård as Tord, with Jack Bergenholz and Gunnar Bolin. Playing at this year's Annecy Film Festival before opening. This looks like it has lovely animation and a heartfelt story. Here's the official US...

Swedish stars Pernilla August (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace), Stellan Skarsgard (The Avengers) and Melinda Kinnaman (My Life as a Dog) have joined the voice cast of The Ape Star, an upcoming animated feature from director Linda Hamback.

Hamback will reteam with her Gordon & Paddy screenwriter Janne Vierth on the pic, in which Jonna, an orphan girl, gets adopted by a mother gorilla.

The film, an adaptation of Frida Nilsson’s award-winning novel, is set to start production next month and wrap in November 2020. Lee Film is producing.

“The main message of the film is that anyone can be ...

Swedish stars Pernilla August (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace), Stellan Skarsgard (The Avengers) and Melinda Kinnaman (My Life as a Dog) have joined the voice cast of The Ape Star, an upcoming animated feature from director Linda Hamback.

Hamback will reteam with her Gordon & Paddy screenwriter Janne Vierth on the pic, in which Jonna, an orphan girl, gets adopted by a mother gorilla.

The film, an adaptation of Frida Nilsson’s award-winning novel, is set to start production next month and wrap in November 2020. Lee Film is producing.

“The main message of the film is that anyone can be ...

PBS Distribution and streaming service Walter Presents have teamed up to bring Swedish crime thriller “Modus” to PBS stations across the U.S.

PBS Distribution, the home video arm of PBS, will roll out “Modus” regionally, starting with Los Angeles station Klcs on Saturday at 11 p.m. Pt. The show will continue to air in the same slot throughout its eight-week run. “Modus” is already available on the members-only streaming service PBS Passport and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel via Amazon.

“This is a really exciting phase for Walter Presents USA, and we’re delighted to be bringing the very best in world drama to a much broader linear audience,” said Walter Iuzzolino, curator of Walter Presents, a joint venture between British broadcaster Channel 4 and Global Series Network. The service specializes in foreign-language drama series.

“American audiences have already embraced the best of British drama and now...

Greg Wise and Billy Campbell are set to join Kim Cattrall in the second season of Swedish thriller Modus. Originated by TV4's streaming service C More where it debuts this fall, Modus is produced by Miso Film and adapted from Norwegian lawyer Anne Holt's book, Frukta Inte. The first season followed psychologist and profiler Inger Johanne Vik (Melinda Kinnaman) as she found herself, and her autistic daughter, drawn into an investigation surrounding a series of disturbing…...

Kim Cattrall is adding to her international TV credits with Modus, the Swedish crime series originated by TV4’s streaming service C More. The erstwhile Samantha Jones will play the U.S. President in the psychological thriller’s second season which is currently in production for air this fall. Modus‘ first season followed psychologist and profiler Inger Johanne Vik (Melinda Kinnaman) as she found herself, and her autistic daughter, drawn into an investigation surrounding a…...

Part of my love of Nordic Noir is the dark style and tone of a lot of the shows. Modus is my latest for review, and is a beautifully dark tale pitting killer against psychologist. Almost pitch black in its style, the fact it reminded me of Hannibal in many ways is a very good sign…

When Inger Johanne Vik’s (Melinda Kinnaman) daughter is saved from the path of a speeding truck by a seemingly passing stranger (Marek Oravec) little does she know that it would be this man who pulls her back into profiling. Working with Ingvar Nyman (Henrik Norlén) on a murder case, Vik has no idea that the encounter with the stranger has also put her daughter in danger.

In Modus we are introduced to the killer straight away, though we know little about him. The most enticing of relationships though is of him and the daughter.

facebook

twitter

google+

As UK remake The Tunnel returns, we celebrate Swedish/Danish crime drama The Bridge...

9pm, Saturday night, BBC Four. For the few of us who still, on occasion, watch television when it’s actually broadcast, that timeslot means only one thing: high-quality drama from outside the anglophone world. Okay, so some of the series are less impressive than others, and one or two are in English (remember Australia’s The Code?) but these are exceptions to the rule. What began as a fad, accompanied by much reductive talk of ‘Scandi noir’ and a mildly disturbing national obsession with Sarah Lund’s knitwear, has culminated in a golden age for telly addicts. Our initial resistance to subtitles has faded, and a whole world of often beautifully acted, compellingly plotted drama has opened up. We haven’t strayed very far outside Europe yet, but it’s a start.

Much...

Chicago – Neither flat-out depressing nor mawkishly sentimentalized, Lasse Hallström’s 1985 Swedish classic, “My Life as a Dog,” avoids all the mistakes routinely committed by filmmakers working within the coming-of-age genre. It doesn’t view events through a treacly nostalgic haze and doesn’t condescend to its characters as if they were all quirky eccentrics ripe for satirizing.

The world as seen through the eyes of twelve-year-old Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) feels so achingly real that it might cause some viewers to wince out of recognition. His lack of coordination and tireless energy cause him to create a great deal of trouble, particularly when goaded by his older brother. The household’s escalating stress proves to take a toll on Ingemar’s ailing mother (Anki Lidén), whose maternal instincts have vanished along with her health.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0

It’s not long before the boys are split up and sent to live with relatives,...