FLM's Best Swedish Films of All Time

An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.

The puppy love of two teenagers is set against a backdrop of adults struggling with their own lives. As a couple in love, they don't care about anything but themselves and seem totally unaware about everything that surrounds them.

Persona is a psychoanalytical film from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and reputed as his greatest masterpiece. The film deals with a silent actress and her relationship with her nurse who narrates her story.

In the middle of this film, about the working class in pre-world war II Sweden, is Anders who wishes to become an author. His father who is a notorious dreamer and liar, and his mother, who struggles to keep their family alive.

Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin.

A theater company rehearses Aristophanes play "Lysistrata" in which the Athenian women revolt to force the men to suspend the war and make peace. The three leading female actresses, Liz, Marianne and Gunilla, all live in humiliating circumstances to their men.

After a young woman commits suicide, her neighbors try to piece together why she did it by tracking down her acquaintances.

A working class teenager comes of age in 1910s rural Sweden, moving through a series of jobs and romances that gradually shape his future.

A widowed actress and her children suffer hardships when she marries a conservative church leader.

Wild Strawberries is a drama from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. He tells the story of one day in the life of medicine professor, Borg, who while on a trip to another university reviews over his life in a dream.

When a police inspector is murdered in hospital, the investigation led by detective Martin Beck uncovers reports of police misconduct and a possible revenge motive.

Oscar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl who turns out to be a vampire.

A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.

Three expectant mothers think back over their sex lives.

In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.

A young Eastern European immigrant working in Sweden is faced with a painful choice when she's laid off from her factory in the name of "efficiencies."

A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.

A Swedish peasant family, ravaged by poverty, privation and misery in mid-19th century Sweden, set out on a perilous journey to America in hope of a better life.

A Swedish immigrant family struggles to adapt to their new life on the American frontier during the second half of the 19th century amidst civil war, native uprising and the lure of gold in California.

A decade has gone by and the spirit of the preceding film, Dom kallar oss mods, has disappeared. Kenta is an alcoholic and lives with his girlfriend Eva. Together they have a son, Patric. Kenta's mom is in jail for manslaughter and Kenta goes to Kronoberg to greet her. Heroin also comes to play and Stoffe is one of those who falls victim to it. ...

A long distance call from a long lost lover makes her reminisce about their common past. She remembers the spring when they met in Paris, the riots, the vespa and the cat named Baby. A film about love, time and things that got lost along the way.

Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breeding Sami girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930s and phrenological examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.

A famous artist isn't invited to her class reunion. She makes a film about what could've happened if she had gone there and confronted her bullies, and later shows that film to her former classmates.

After Ingeborg Holm's husband becomes sick and dies, the family's small grocery store fails, Ingeborg becomes bankrupt, and she is forced to move to the workhouse. Her three children go to foster homes. Ingeborg simply must see them again.

Haxan is a study about how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts. The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films.

In Sweden at the turn of the century, members of the upper class and their servants find themselves in a romantic tangle that they try to work out amidst jealousy and heartbreak.

A mentally challenged man escapes from his tyrannical master and finds happiness when a poor family takes him in.

Three Scottish officers, including Sir Archi, murder Sir Arne and his household for a coffin filled with gold. The only survivor is Elsalill, who moves to relatives in Marstrand. There she meets a charming young officer- Sir Archi- and she soon understands that he was one of the murderers.

The film is based on a true occurrence in Sweden in 1988. A Finnish couple murdered a young boy and his parents when they prevented the theft of the son's bicycle. The film tries to describe the relationship between the dominant Jari, who calls himself "Il Capitano", and his more mature "soldier" Minna, that develops into mutual dependence.

In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008. The thieves used an elaborate scheme called the 'little brother number' or 'brother trick', involving advanced role-play and gang rhetoric rather than physical violence.

A tale of young woman, Britt, who has two flings, but finds herself with difficult decisions when she finds herself pregnant.

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to e...

In a struggling post-Soviet community, Lilya a teenage girl is abandoned when her mother moves to the United States with her boyfriend. Facing neglect and poverty, she meets Andrei, who offers her a job in Sweden, giving her hope for a better life — and a journey that will change everything.

A man on the verge of marriage is haunted by traumatic memories from his childhood.

An unspecified European country ca 1912 in the throws of political upheaval. A man only dressed in black (Jacob, played by Philip Zandén) is hired to assassinate the Interior Minister Joel Birkman (Etienne Glaser) after a particular brutal strike down of a student protest. He takes up work as the minister's bodyguard at his summer residence, and...

A young woman, muted after a sexual assault as a child, is trained to seek violent revenge on those who have wronged her after being kidnapped and forced to work as a prostitute.

Elisabeths husband is on the verge of leaving after she and her son move into the alternative hippie apartment of her brother. She learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives in this important comedy film from Swedish director Moodysson.

A container with stuff from a cleaned out apartment in Stockholm drives the cineaste to look for their owners. In the course of this quest, he meets the actor Ernst-Hugo Järegård and the author Stig Larsson. The desire to give meaning where perhaps there is none.

A group of party goers have trouble getting their boat ashore on a small island. The inhabitants of the island try to help, often with the help of an old sailor, and the results are absurd and hilarious.

The year is 1972. School starts for class 1D in Lunda School in Jordbro, a suburb of Stockholm. We then follow the children to end of third grade in spring, 1975, learning about their struggles and dreams in life.

En dokumentärfilm som skildrar ett gäng unga Stockholmkillars tillvaro i utkanten av samhället. Filmen är den första delen i en trilogi.

A number of complicated relationships develop between a circus ringmaster, his estranged wife and his lover.

Retired police detective Roland Hassel (Lars-Erik Berenett, who played Hassel on TV in the 1980s) is determined to solve the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Without access to police files, however, the best he can manage is to attend an inept re-enactment on the 25th anniversary of the murder...

An idealistic adolescent, suffering under the thumb of a sadistic schoolmaster, falls in love with a loose girl who is bullied and tormented by another lover.

On 13 December (St Lucy's Day), a bandit daringly robs a crowded post office. Within a fortnight, two witnesses are dead. Vice cops Johansson and Jarnebring, the first to the scene of the crime, pursue all leads and identify a suspect, an arrogant member of the elite secret police, assigned to guard the country's Minister of Justice. Just as the...

About an 11-year old girl and her life in the area commonly known as "Seppan", after the local factory AB Separator, south of Stockholm in the 1960s.

A satirical drama reflecting our times — about the sense of community, moral courage and the affluent person’s need for egocentricity in an increasingly uncertain world.

A sleepy Swedish province hopes to lure a discount store chain by hiring a pompous commercial director to document their town's worthiness, but two bright, brash high school girls from immigrant families use their cellphones and selfie sticks to tell the real story.

Reine is supposed to go to a summer camp called Children's Island but decides to remain in Stockholm over the summer while his mother is working at a hospital. She thinks he is at the camp, and he tells her he is. We then follow him around Stockholm that summer and see what he encounters on the path of life.

A young girl dreams of a birthday party, where family and friends from her day-care center are invited. But in fact, her parents are always quarreling.