Swedes in America

We followed Said Belhaj when he showed his good friend Dani Andrada around on the Swedish west coast for ten days. They climbed some of the old classic routes and also tried some of the projects the area has to offer. We tried our best to capture the spirit, surroundings and the atmosphere around their visit here.

After years of preparation, a team of highly motivated Quebeckers set out on one of the longest wilderness expeditions ever documented. Stage one involves skiing in relentless polar conditions from Ellesmere Island to the Northwest Passage where the challenge was reaching the mainland. Cue canoes for a 2000km journey across Nunavut and NWT until they reach the first dirt road available where bikes are waiting to be pedalled 4000km to Point Pelee in Ontario.

How can an artist discover abstraction by the beginning of the 20th century and nobody is noticing? A woman, misjudged and concealed, rocks the art world with her mind-blowing oeuvre. Hilma af Klint was a pioneer creating her first abstract painting in 1906, four years before Vassily Kandinsky. But why was she ignored? Why are her paintings not available on the market? This first film on her is about her life and work, the role of women in art history and the discovery of an art scandal. Her quest for meaning in life and a boundless thinking led into a timeless, outstanding oeuvre.

Short documentary by Gunter Otto

Because of the poor employment situation in Finland, many families and single people decided to move to Sweden to seek employment in the 1960s and 70s. The move was considered temporary and it affected people’s ways of making themselves at home in the new country; they did not even try to adapt or learn the language of the country. At that time, the nicknames “Finnjävel” and “Hurri” were well-known to Swedish-Finnish youngsters: In Sweden, they were regarded as Finns; and the other way around. As neither nation’s citizens approved them as their own, the Sweden Finns had to create their own identity. But what kind of lives do these immigrants’ children and grandchildren live today? Jonas Karén was born in a Finnish family in Husby’s suburb 1980.

This short film takes the viewer to several towns and historical sites of rural Sweden.

The Chinese global machine has been invited to revitalise the ailing Swedish town of Kalmar. The town's mayor has invited a Chinese company to build a trade centre and 300 homes, but all does not go to plan. An amusing and deeply relevant film, which shows the fault lines that emerge when the tigers of the developing world try to expand into Europe.

Green lights dance across a star-filled sky, and snowflakes sparkle on the trees. It is little wonder Lapland is famous as a realm of elves and flying reindeer, the magical home of Santa Claus. This northernmost region of mainland Europe, however, is a real place, with real animals such as reindeer, Great Gray owls, wolverines, eagles, wolves, musk oxen and Brown bears who live out their lives in the tundra and forest.

Every winter in a cemetery near Stockholm, activists gather to keep the memory of Fadime Sahindal alive. A Kurdish immigrant to Sweden who was murdered by her father in 2002, Fadime has become an international symbol of the debate over cultural traditions that accept the use of violence to control women's behaviour. In Crimes Without Honour, four extraordinary activists risk everything to publicly challenge these traditions and tell their own stories of physical and emotional violence. While they practice different faiths, hail from different parts of the world and have immigrated to different countries, all make it crystal clear that the justification for these crimes is an entrenched family power structure of male supremacy—one that crosses borders, cultures and religions. Raymonde Provencher has crafted a vital addition to a growing body of films about crimes related to patriarchal traditions of family honour.

A portrait of Maggie, through Swedish everyday life. Maggie always co-ordinates high heels with a beret, and she loves gold. She lives on the 15th floor in one of Malmö’s suburbs. Her balcony is littered with reminders of her previous life. Under a golf bag, next to a racing ticket from 1999, are the remains of a pigeon that she killed when she couldn’t sleep.