Granny's Dancing on the Table - on screen, on the web, in a game and in Cannes

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

21/05/2012 - Swedish director Hanna Sköld, who took out a private bank loan to finance her feature debut Nasty Old People (2009) and launched it on Pirate Bay, is back in Cannes with her Granny's Dancing on the Table feature project, after the script garnered her MEDIA's European Talent 2011 Prize at last year's festival.

Backed by around $90,000 development money (she also received ARTE's Power to the Pixel award) and support from the Swedish and Danish film institutes, she is currently trying to raise $50,000 crowd-funding (and collect 10,000 granny stories) for her Granniverse on Kickstarter before June 1 - "If we don't reach our goal, no money changes hands, and possibly no movie is made," she said.

Granniverse includes Sköld's Below, a "psychological smartpad adventure game" with characters from the film developed by Ozma Game Design, and a live/on-line events website, both ahead of Granny's Dancing on the Table, which will be produced by Good World's Helene Granqvist, who also backed Nasty Old People.

Described as a dark tale, on the borderline of reality and fantasy, the film centres around a young girl, Eini, who lives with her father in the Swedish woods; at 17 she runs away from home and ends up in a society full of unwritten rules and social codes. Her only comfort is her fantasy about her dancing granny. Eini, it appears, has the power to predict the tiniest earthquakes, and she is about to discover sex.

With shooting planned for this autumn, Granny's Dancing on the Table will be co-produced by Sweden's Migma Film AB, Denmark's Asta Film ApS (Oscar-winning producer Per Holst) and Pebble (development & transmedia producer Valeria Richter), France's Slot Machine (Marianne Slot) and Polish Oscar-winning animation studio, Se-ma-for.