19/07/2011

Swedish director Andreas Öhman (photo), whose feature debut Simple Simon [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2010) took 275,000 admissions domestically to become Sweden’s submission for the Oscars, will follow up with Bitch Hug, currently shooting on locations at Sundsvall.

Co-scripted by Jonathan Sjöberg, who also contributed to Simple Simon, the drama comedy is produced by Bonnie Skoog Feeney for FilmLance International AB, with Sonet Film AB, Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Television AB- SVT, Dagsljus AB and Öhman-Sjöberg’s company, Naive Ab.

Bitch Hug is the story of a successful student in a small provincial town, Kristin, who cannot wait to pass her exams and take a flight for New York – the city of her dreams – and write for the local daily, which has agreed to print her articles. Her farewell party goes wrong, however, and she misses her plane. To save face, she hides in a house in the middle of nowhere with a weird girl, Andrea; together, they take a ‘virtual’ NY voyage, which she describes in the paper. Then, reality knocks at the door…

Linda Molin, of Lisa Aschan’s award-winning She Monkeys [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lisa Aschan
film profile], will star as Kristin, with Fanny Ketter (a regular in Vintergatan, the TV series) and Mathilda von Essen, shortly to be seen in US director David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Niels Arden Oplev
interview: Søren Stærmose
film profile].

Öhman’s 2008 short, My Life as a Trailer (2008), won the Startsladden award at the Göteborg International Film Festival, which included €87,000 that he used it to begin work on Simple Simon, which in its first version was a 29-minute short.

An avid blogger, the director reports daily on the production of his second feature on http://blogg.bitchkram.se. Svensk Filmindustri AB will handle local distribution of the film and has scheduled the release for spring 2012.