''Falkenberg Farewell'' () is a 2006
Swedish drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...
, written and directed by
Jesper Ganslandt. It was nominated for four
Guldbagge Award
The Guldbagge Awards (, ) is an official and annual Sweden, Swedish film awards ceremony honoring achievements in the Swedish film industry. Winners are awarded a statuette depicting a Cetonia aurata, rose chafer, better known by the name Guldbagg ...
s including Best Film as well as being selected as Sweden's submission for the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...
at the
79th Academy Awards
The 79th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2006 and took place February 25, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m ...
, but it was not nominated.
Plot
The film presents five childhood friends in their twenties who have grown up together in the town
Falkenberg
Falkenberg is a locality and the seat of Falkenberg Municipality, Halland County, Sweden, with 27,813 inhabitants in 2019 (out of a municipal total of about 45,000). It is located at the mouth of river Ätran. The name consists of the Swedish ...
. The movie chronicles what they call "their last summer" in the town, faced with the prospect that sooner or later they have to move up to
Gothenburg
Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...
. Their lives in Falkenberg currently circle around nothing and each other: Holger, who seems to be the central figure of the five, faces fears of moving away from his hometown and becoming clichéd; his brother John, grumpy and lazy; Jesper, the only member of the group who already attempted to move away from the town, but ends up coming back nevertheless; Jörgen, who is in the process of setting up a catering business, but without much prospect; and David, the sensitive loner and Holger's best friend, whose diary serves as a narration for the story. The film offers vignettes of the seemingly empty lives of the five: wandering in nature, dealing with the parental expectations, swimming in the sea and burglarizing homes (although more as a pastime activity opposed to a financial source).
At the climax of the movie, David wraps up his diary and mails it off to Holger. He then packs up a shotgun, goes out to the forest and commits suicide. Holger is initially distraught, but eventually, as David predicted in his diary, "life goes on" and the remaining friends settle back into their former routine of killing time and facing their inevitable prospects.
Cast
*
John Axel Eriksson as John
*
Holger Eriksson as Holger
*
David Johnson as David
*
Jesper Ganslandt as Jesper
*
Jörgen Svensson as Jörgen
*
Rolf Sundberg as Jesper's father
*
Ulla Jerndin as Holger's and John's mother
*
Per-Ola Eriksson as Holger's and John's father
* Helena Svensson as Jörgen's mother
See also
* ''
The Ape'', director Jesper Ganslandt's second feature film.
*
*
List of Swedish submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
External links
*
*
Farväl Falkenberg at Moviemix
2006 films
Swedish drama films
2000s Swedish films
{{2000s-Sweden-film-stub