15/03/2012 - Backed by the Stockholm Film Festival's prize for new women film-makers, Swedish director Sofia Norlin starts her debut feature this week

Swedish 16-year-old actress Lina Leandersson (pictured), who played the lead in Thomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: John Nordling
interview: Tomas Alfredson
film profile] (2008), will star with Sebastian Hiort af Ornäs in Swedish director Sofia Norlin's feature debut Tenderness, which starts principal photography this week (March 15) in Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost city. Leandersson just finished her work on Estonian director Kadri Kousaar's European Psycho; Hiort af Ornäs had his screen breakthrough in Swedish director Babak Najafi's Sebbe [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2010).

Tenderness is the first winner of the €500,000 scholarship for new women film-makers, launched last year by the Stockholm International Film Festival, including cash, services and a Nordic-Baltic distribution contract with Sweden's NonStop Entertainment, and backed by Telia communications, facility companies Dagsljus, Cinepost and the Swedish Film Institute (SFI).

The prize originally went to Lisa Aschan (She Monkeys [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lisa Aschan
film profile]), who decided her project was probably not the most suitable for the concept. Instead it went to Norlin's depiction of young people taking the first steps towards building a new society, while the ground is literally shaking under their feet: Kiruna is situated on a mine, which is its pounding centre as well as a force that is threatening to tear it apart.

Produced by Olivier Guerpillon for DFM Fiktion, Tenderness will film on location until mid-June and will have its world premiere during this year's Stockholm festival (between November 7-18) before its release in spring 2013. A film student from Paris and Stockholm, Norlin has previously directed a 30-minute French-Swedish novella film, The Currents (2005), for France 2 and Sweden's SVT.