Lukas Moodysson
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Karl Fredrik Lukas Moodysson (; born 17 January 1969) is a Swedish filmmaker,
novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...
, and short story writer. First coming to prominence as an ambitious poet in the 1980s, he had his big domestic and international breakthrough directing the 1998 romantic film '' Show Me Love''. He has since directed a string of films with different styles and public appeal, as well as continued to write both poetry and novels. In 2007, ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' ranked Moodysson eleventh in its list of the world’s best directors, describing his directorial style as “heartfelt and uncompromising.”


Early life

Born in
Lund Lund (, ;"Lund"
(US) and
) is a city in the provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, southern Swed ...
, Moodysson grew up in
Åkarp Åkarp () is a locality situated in Burlöv Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 5,617 inhabitants in 2010. It is situated approximately 8 km northeast of Malmö and 13 km southwest of Lund. It has a railway station Rail tra ...
,
Skåne County Skåne County ( ), sometimes referred to as Scania County or just Scania in English, is the southernmost Counties of Sweden, county, or , of Sweden, mostly corresponding to the traditional Provinces of Sweden, province of Scania. It borders th ...
as an outcast, expressing himself through poetry. By the time he was 23 he had written five poetry collections and a
novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...
published by Wahlström & Widstrand. He decided to move to film to produce works that were less introverted and could be enjoyed by a wider audience than poetry. After studying at what was then Sweden's only film school, the Dramatiska Institutet, he directed three
short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...
s before moving to features.


Filmmaking

Moodysson's directorial breakthrough came with ''Fucking Åmål'' (retitled '' Show Me Love'' in English-speaking countries). A classical love story, filmed in a highly naturalistic, almost documentary style, it is set in the small and boring Swedish town of Åmål, and follows two girls who awkwardly fall in love. The film was a huge success with the Swedish public and critics. It won 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, best actress (shared by the two girls Rebecka Liljeberg and Alexandra Dahlström), best direction and best script. It was a colossal hit in Sweden. His next film, 2000's ''
Together ''ToGetHer'' (, aka Superstar Express) is a 2009 Taiwanese drama starring Jiro Wang of Fahrenheit, Rainie Yang and George Hu. It was produced by Comic International Productions ( 可米國際影視事業股份有限公司) and directed by Linzi ...
'' (Tillsammans), followed the antics of life in a commune in suburban Stockholm in the 1970s. It achieved a sense of the era through extensive use of period Swedish
progg Progg was a left-wing and anti-commercial musical movement in Sweden that began in the late 1960s and became more widespread in the 1970s. Not to be confused with the English expressions "progressive music" or "prog rock," progg is a contraction ...
and pop songs, including
ABBA ABBA ( ) were a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. They are one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, and are one of the List ...
's hit "
SOS SOS is a Morse code distress signal (), used internationally, originally established for maritime use. In formal notation SOS is written with an overscore line (), to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" a ...
." Moodysson followed up these two sunny, cheerfully optimistic films with the brutal '' Lilya 4-ever'' in 2002, included in many American critics' top ten lists the following year. The mainly
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film follows a girl living in an unspecified country in the former
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
(filmed in Estonia) as she is abandoned by her mother, drops out of school, is forced into prostitution, and then is kidnapped into sex slavery. Moodysson has said he could not have made the film without his strong Christian beliefs. The frequent religious fantasies that Lilja has are the only tender spots in the bleak world Moodysson presents. At the time of its release, critic
Dave Kehr David Kehr (born 1953) is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the ''Chicago Reader'' and the ''Chicago Tribune,'' he later wrote a weekly column for ''The New York Times'' on DVD releases. He later became a c ...
of ''
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'' declared Moodysson to be "Sweden's most praised filmmaker since Ingmar Bergman". His 2004 film, the controversial '' A Hole in My Heart'' (Ett hål i mitt hjärta) is more an experimental film than a traditional narrative. He has said it is intentionally designed to be off-putting to the audience. It intersperses frequent screeching noises, close-ups of female genital surgery, and other jarring elements into a vague plot about two pornographers shooting their latest video in a filthy apartment, with an attention-craving porn starlet, while the webbed-handed son of one of the men stays holed up in his bedroom. It received a special certificate for shocking images in Sweden and received terrible reviews from the vast majority of critics. He followed this with another even more experimental film, 2006's ''
Container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...
'', featuring narration by actress Jena Malone. The only sound in the movie is a
stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. It is usually in the form of an interior monologue which ...
narrative, which is only loosely related to the visual content. Moodysson's work took a new turn with ''
Mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus.'' They lived from the late Miocene epoch (from around 6.2 million years ago) into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabi ...
'', released 23 January 2009. Unlike his previous two efforts, it is a narrative film and his first English-language piece, about a successful New York couple, their daughter and her Filipino nanny. His 2013 film '' We are the Best!'' (Vi är bäst!), based on the comic book '' Aldrig Godnatt'' by his wife Coco Moodysson, returns to the themes and style of ''Show Me Love'' and ''Together'', set in 1982 and following the exploits of a teenage three-piece girl punk-band. All of Moodysson's feature films have been produced, or co-produced, by Memfis Film, a small Swedish production company based in Stockholm. Memfis' CEO and producer Lars Jönsson seeks to establish long-term working relationships with directors and support even less commercially oriented projects such as Moodysson's ''A Hole in My Heart'' and ''Container''. 2019 saw the premiere of the TV series '' Gösta'', Moodysson's first foray into television and
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's first commissioned drama series out of Scandinavia. Moodysson's''Together 99'', a sequel ''Together'', was released in 2023. Set in 1999, it follows Göran and Klas as they establish a new commune. Most of the actors returned, with the exception of the children, Michael Nyqvist (who died in 2017), and Ola Rapace, whose role of Lasse was recast with actor Jonas Karlsson.


Personal life

Moodysson is an outspoken advocate of left-wing and
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
politics, and a deeply committed Christian. He lives in
Malmö Malmö is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, sixth-largest city in Nordic countries, the Nordic region. Located on ...
with his wife, artist Coco Moodysson. They have three children.


Filmography

*'' Det var en mörk och stormig natt'' — 1995 *'' En uppgörelse i den undre världen'' — 1996 *'' Talk'' (''Bara prata lite'') — 1997 *'' Show Me Love'' (''Fucking Åmål'') — 1998 *''
Together ''ToGetHer'' (, aka Superstar Express) is a 2009 Taiwanese drama starring Jiro Wang of Fahrenheit, Rainie Yang and George Hu. It was produced by Comic International Productions ( 可米國際影視事業股份有限公司) and directed by Linzi ...
'' (''Tillsammans'') — 2000 *'' The New Country'' (''Det nya landet'') — 2000 *'' Lilya 4-ever'' — 2002 *'' Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced'' (''Terrorister - en film om dom dömda'') — 2003 *'' A Hole in My Heart'' (''Ett hål i mitt hjärta'') — 2004 *''
Container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...
'' — 2006 *''
Mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus.'' They lived from the late Miocene epoch (from around 6.2 million years ago) into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabi ...
'' (''Mammut'') — 2009 *'' We Are the Best!'' (''Vi är bäst!'') — 2013 *'' Gösta'' — TV series, 2019 *'' Together 99'' (''Tillsammans 99'') — 2023


Bibliography

* ''Det spelar ingen roll var blixtarna slår ner'' (1987) - poems * ''Och andra dikter'' (1988) - poems * ''Evangelium enligt Lukas Moodysson'' (1989) - poems * ''Vitt blod'' (1990) - novel * ''Kött'' (1991) - poems * ''Souvenir'' (1996) - poems * ''Mellan sexton och tjugosex'' (2001) - selected works * ''Vad gör jag här'' (2002) - long poem * ''Vårdcentralen Fontanellen'' (2005) (with Coco Moodysson) - comic book * ''Apo kryp hos'' (2006) - poems * ''Container'' (2009) - screenplay and documentation * ''Döden & Co.'' (2011) - novel * ''Tolv månader i skugga'' (2012) - novel


Awards and honors

*1999: Teddy Award for Best Feature Film – ''Fucking Åmål'' *2000: Gijón International Film Festival: Best Director – ''Together''. Best Script – ''Together''. Young Jury Prize for Best Feature Film – ''Together''. *2002: Gijón International Film Festival: Best Feature Film – ''Lilya 4-ever''. Young Jury Prize for Best Feature Film – ''Lilya 4-ever''. *2003: Stig Dagerman Prize


References


Further reading

*


External links

* *
Interview with Moodysson about ''Lilya 4-ever''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moodysson, Lukas 1969 births Living people Writers from Lund Swedish film directors Swedish poets 20th-century Swedish novelists 21st-century Swedish novelists Swedish-language writers Swedish Christians Swedish feminists Best Director Guldbagge Award winners Best Screenplay Guldbagge Award winners Male feminists Swedish male screenwriters Swedish male poets Swedish male novelists 20th-century Swedish male writers 21st-century Swedish male writers