Stefan Ekman
Criminal detective Roland Hassel and his colleague Bolinder is investigating a criminal gang involved in the meat packing business. Bolinder is murdered in front of Hassel and the criminals are out to kill Hassel, the only witness.
The siblings Niklas and Anneli must accompany their slightly giddy aunt Tinne to the Zoo in Copenhagen. The visit to the zoo has quite different consequences than Aunt Tinne has ever dreamt of. When the children win a real pony in a lottery they have to bring it home to Stockholm without anyone noticing.
This co-production between Norway and Sweden is the first film that Anja Breien has made since Wives. She has adapted a novel by Hjalmar Soderberg. who also wrote 'Gertrud' from which Carl Dreyer's last film was made, and Doctor Glas' (made into a film by Mai Zetterhng) Games of Love and Loneliness, concerns the manners and mores of Scandinavian society between the years 1897 and 1912. A young journalist, Arvid, falls in love with a girl but won't commit himself to marrying her. She marries an older and richer man and he's pushed into marrying the girl he's been sleeping with. He meets his first love again, and she leaves her husband to have an affair with him, but he still cannot bring himself to leave his wife. Although Anja Breien has changed the character of the girl to make her less of a femme fatale and more of an emancipated woman, the film's central concern is the young man who cannot make up his mind what to do with his life.
The Ghost Sonata relates the adventures of a young student, who idealizes the lives of the inhabitants of a stylish apartment building in Stockholm. He makes the acquaintance of the mysterious Jacob Hummel, who helps him to find his way into the apartment, only to find that it is a nest of betrayal and sickness. The world, the student learns, is hell and human beings must suffer to achieve salvation. The play centers on a family of strangers who meet for the sake of meeting. They exchange no dialogue, nor gestures, they simply sit and bask in their own misfortune.
A group of young people gathered on the countryside to celebrate midsummer dancing, drinking and romancing. And some fighting too. Followed by more violence, jealousy and guilt. On the journey home one of the cars the travel in collides with a bus.
"Dad, why are you angry? You did the same yourself when you were young." - The Swedish army is too expensive. The cost has to be reduced by downsizing. The army chiefs begins to recreated the country's defense system.
Sweden 1889. The young Per Nilsson has a very dominant mother, Anna Månsdotter. His father died many years ago and he and his mother have for a long time been in a incestuous relationship. But Per marries Hanna for the sake of her money and Anna is mean and evil towards her, and Per refuses to have sex with her. She starts to suspect that something is going on between her husband and stepmother.
Rikard Adamsson, a young man dreaming of becoming a writer, lives a wild and dissolute bohemian life. A ferocious fighter with a heart of gold and a great taste for women. In the military service he gets in trouble, runs away, returns and is sentenced to prison. Inside he finishes his first novel. However, no publisher is interested.
