INNER BEAUTY
Text & Photo: Victor Moreno
Founder of the production company Acne Films – a division of the Acne family – Fredrik Edfeldt has worked shooting commercials for several years whilst wrote some scripts and did a few short films. In 2009, he finished his phase at Acne directing and producing his first feature film The girl, critically celebrated and awarded at the Berlinnale that year.
His camera works delicately, showing beautifully what the characters had inside. Today, Fredrik has his own production company, Style War. During the last year he is been working on his second feature film, Fårö, which already grabbed the attention of critique and audience around Sweden – called to be one of the most exciting proposals within the Scandinavian film industry in the latest years. Taking advance of the recent edition of the Stockholm Film Festival, Fredrik and his team introduced the work in progress, revealing more things about this new project currently in its edition process. We had a chat together in order to get a little bit closer.
Please tell me about the new project, Fårö, your second feature film.
The story is set in Sweden in the early 80s. A daughter and father run away in the forest. I guess there’re not so many places in the world where you can really hide, to get away from police or society. So they’re creating this world of their own here in the forest. The title Farö is because the father has travelled a lot before, so they’re talking about this possibility to scape to Fårö – an idilic place in the island of Gotland in Sweden – but of course, they never make it – it’s just like a possibility, a dream for them to have they freedom somewhere else.
Where did you shoot it?
We shot it in the south-mid part of Sweden, not so far away from Gothenburg. We shot it this summer. We are in the editing process right now. We had editing for ten weeks and we have some other weeks to go.
When would be the realising of the film?
The beginning of next year.
May be right to say you had a background within the advertisement field?
I kind of started in advertisement 10 years ago, when we founded the production company Acne Film in Sweden. They had already started a brand with jeans and fashion so I was part of that, I started that. They decided to go into advertising, you know, people working with graphical design that directed this commercials and they sort of needed people that could have more classical film background. I did commercials with them for 5 years and then I joined another Swedish group called Style War that also is doing commercials all over the world, working with Stink Production in London and Smuggler, another production company in the States and also a French production company. But what I do now is featured film, so you have to work with another people.
How could you explain this evolution from commercial work to feature film?
I’ve been always interested in the long format and doing drama and that kind of things. Working with commercials has been like a great film school to me and then I had the opportunity to do my first feature film The Girl with Acne. It was really good creativity atmosphere there, it was a great journey. The new film turned out to be with another company but I’m still working with Fatima Varhos, who is the same producer now and then. It’s very different in terms of content but to me all the shooting days are the same because is the same process, you put the camera and you do something in front of the camera and you film it. Of course, it’s more satisfying having a story like this, more deep.
Are you involved with the script?
Kind of. It was quite ready but I did a few adjustments.
Please tell me about the cast.
Jakob Cedergren, the main role in the film, he is very famous in Denmark. I was lucky to figured out that he also speaks Swedish due to his father is from Sweden; because I couldn’t come up with a Swedish actor, so I saw Thomas Vinterberg’s film called Submarino and Jakob was nominated for his work there in some European film award so he’s experienced and well, he really loved the script.
Is it a Swedish film or a co-production?
The film is like a Scandinavian co-production. We have such small numbers of audience in Sweden, so we aiming for at least the European market. I think it can be some sort of potential in this, with the forest and the nature kind of unique, kind of special up here in Sweden and it feels there’s some kind of “back to the nature” trend so all that can maybe help this film.
So what’s left to keep the film ready?
It is still the editing and grading sound, which I think it will be really crucial for this film, creating this sound scape from the forest, exploring how to make that come alive
Are you looking at any festivals?
Yeah, we would like to attend Berlinale, I was there with my last film, but perhaps it’s a little bit too close, be done so it’s already in February.
What’s your opinion about the Swedish film industry.
In a global perspective I think Swedish film industry is still lucky because the great support we get from the state when producing films. This allows us doing films even though the number of potential audience is small and if we really want, we can keep up a high artistic quality.
Is Swedish cinematographer Ingmar Bergman a reference for you?
Yes and no. Working with films in Sweden you can’t get pass Ingmar Bergman who had an enormous influence. To me he is inspirational just because he took the craft so seriously and showed that films can be so much more than pure entertainment.
I guess he and Garbo are the icons of Swedish film history…
I think actress Ingrid Bergman also was as iconic. And than we had two other international acclaimed directors; Bo Widerberg and Jan Troell which work are as interesting as Bergman.
