Falkenberg Farewell
Encyclopedia
Falkenberg Farewell is a 2006
Swedish
drama
film, written and directed by Jesper Ganslandt. It was nominated for four Guldbagge Award
s including Best Film as well as being selected as Sweden's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
.
. The movie chronicles what they call "their last summer" in the town, faced with the prospect that sooner or later they have to move up to Göteborg. Their lives in Falkenberg currently circle around nothing and each other: Holger, who seems to be the central figure of the five, faces fears of moving away from his hometown and becoming clichéd; his brother John, grumpy and lazy; Jesper, the only member of the group who already attempted to move away from the town, but ends up coming back nevertheless; Jörgen, who is in the process of setting up a catering business, but without much prospect; and David, the sensitive loner and Holger's best friend, whose diary serves as a narration for the story. The film offers vignettes of the seemingly empty lives of the five: wandering in nature, dealing with the parental expectations, swimming in the sea and burglarizing homes (although more as a pastime activity opposed to a financial source).
At the climax of the movie, David wraps up his diary and mails it off to Holger. He then packs up a shotgun, goes out to the forest and commits suicide. Holger is initially distraught, but eventually, as David predicted in his diary, "life goes on" and the remaining friends settle back into their former routine of killing time and facing their inevitable prospects.
2006 in film
- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2006...
Swedish
Cinema of Sweden
Swedish cinema is known as producing many critically acclaimed movies, and during the 20th century was the most prominent of Scandinavia. This is largely due to the popularity and prominence of the directors Ingmar Bergman, Victor Sjöström, and more recently Lasse Hallström and Lukas...
drama
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
film, written and directed by Jesper Ganslandt. It was nominated for four Guldbagge Award
Guldbagge Award
The Guldbagge Award is an official Swedish film award awarded annually since 1964 by the Swedish Film Institute.-Etymology:Guldbagge is the Swedish name for Cetonia aurata, a beetle also known as rose chafer. The name of the award could also be interpreted as a play on the Swedish word skalbagge,...
s including Best Film as well as being selected as Sweden's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
.
Plot
The film presents five childhood friends in their twenties who have grown up together in the city FalkenbergFalkenberg
Falkenberg is a locality and the seat of Falkenberg Municipality, Halland County, Sweden, with 18,972 inhabitants in 2005.The town has a population of 19,000 and is located at the mouth of the river Ätran. The name consists of the Swedish words for falcon and mountain...
. The movie chronicles what they call "their last summer" in the town, faced with the prospect that sooner or later they have to move up to Göteborg. Their lives in Falkenberg currently circle around nothing and each other: Holger, who seems to be the central figure of the five, faces fears of moving away from his hometown and becoming clichéd; his brother John, grumpy and lazy; Jesper, the only member of the group who already attempted to move away from the town, but ends up coming back nevertheless; Jörgen, who is in the process of setting up a catering business, but without much prospect; and David, the sensitive loner and Holger's best friend, whose diary serves as a narration for the story. The film offers vignettes of the seemingly empty lives of the five: wandering in nature, dealing with the parental expectations, swimming in the sea and burglarizing homes (although more as a pastime activity opposed to a financial source).
At the climax of the movie, David wraps up his diary and mails it off to Holger. He then packs up a shotgun, goes out to the forest and commits suicide. Holger is initially distraught, but eventually, as David predicted in his diary, "life goes on" and the remaining friends settle back into their former routine of killing time and facing their inevitable prospects.
Cast
- John Axel ErikssonJohn Axel Eriksson-External links:*...
as John - Holger Eriksson as Holger
- David Johnson as David
- Jesper Ganslandt as Jesper
- Jörgen Svensson as Jörgen
- Rolf Sundberg as Jesper's father
- Ulla Jerndin as Holger's and John's mother
- Per-Ola ErikssonPer-Ola ErikssonPer-Ola Eriksson is a Swedish politician. He is a member of the Centre Party. Eriksson was a member of the Parliament of Sweden from 1982 to 1998, and held the key post as chairman of the Committee on Finance from 1991 to 1994, when his party was part of the coalition forming Cabinet of Carl...
as Holger's and John's father - Helena Svensson as Jörgen's mother