06/03/2014 - Ester Martin Bergsmark’s Something Must Break and Sofia Norlin’s Broken Hill Blues represent Sweden, and Tonislav Hristov’s Love & Engineering Finland at the April showcase

Swedish directors Ester Martin Bergsmark’s Something Must Break [+see also:
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film profile] and Sofia Norlin’s Broken Hill Blues [+see also:
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film profile] have been selected for the official programme of the Tribeca Film Festival, set to unspool in Lower Manhattan, New York, between 16 and 27 April.

Bergsmark’s feature debut will screen in the World Narrative Feature Competition, while Norlin’s coming-of-age title – which will also compete at the International Women’s Film Festival in Créteil, France, on 14-23 March – will be on show in the Viewpoint sidebar, committed to “launching fresh voices and embracing risky, utterly original storytelling”. The Finnish production of Bulgarian director Tonislav Hristov’s documentary, Love & Engineering, is also included in the Viewpoint line-up.

Swedish author Eli Levén played the lead in Bergsmark’s She Male Snails [+see also:
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film profile] (2012), and Levén’s novel You Are the Roots that Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place (2010) provided the story for Something Must Break, which they scripted together. The love story of two young men, who meet as they are both fleeing from everyday life and the fear of conforming, opened the Göteborg International Film Festival, where Bergsmark received the Mai Zetterling scholarship; the film went on to win the Tiger Award competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Norlin’s Broken Hill Blues is set in Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost city, which is situated on a mine that constitutes its beating heart as well as a force threatening to tear it apart. The film follows four young people: their dreams of the future and their first steps towards building a new society, while the ground is literally shaking under their feet. Norlin was the first filmmaker to receive the Stockholm International Film Festival’s €95,000 grant “to highlight woman directors at the beginning of their career”.