13/09/2011

Sweden’s 12-member Oscar committee has decided to submit Swedish actress Pernilla August’s feature directorial debut, Beyond [+see also:
trailer
film profile], as Sweden’s official candidate for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Feature.

Beyond enters the Oscar race shortly after it was one of the five films nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize, Scandinavia’s largest film award, which will be announced next month (October). It has also been shortlisted for the European Film Awards.

Scripted by Lolita Ray, August’s first feature is based on Finnish-Swedish author Susanne Alakoski’s first, semi-autobiographical and best-selling novel, The Pigsties, about growing up in 1970s’ Ystad, which picked up Sweden’s literary August Prize for Literature in 2006.

The depiction of a woman confronted with the memories of her childhood as a refugee girl in a home harassed by abuse and alcoholism, the film stars Millennium actress Noomi Rapace, with Ola Rapace, Ville Virtanen and Outi Mäenpää.

Produced by Helena Danielsson, for HeppfilmCinema, and Ralf Karlsson, for Drakfilm Ab, it was released in Sweden last December by Nordisk Film to clock in app 400,000 admissions, adding 250,000 in the other Scandinavian countries.

Beyond garnered August a Guldbagge – Sweden’s national film prize – for Best Director, and touring the international festival circuit it collected top prizes atVenice, where it won the International Critics’ Week, at the Nordic Film Days in Lübeck, in Hamburg and Sao Paolo.

Over the years, 13 Swedish features have been nominated for the Foreign-Language Oscar, most recently Kay Pollak’s As It Is In Heaven [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in 2004. Ingmar Bergman scooped the trophy three times, most recently in 1983 for Fanny and Alexander.