Amateurs

Gabriela Pichler made her directorial debut with the critically acclaimed Eat Sleep Die in 2012, and returns this year with another heartfelt, but nuanced film set in a sleepy Swedish town.

Fictitious town Lafors has a chance of becoming the new location for a German low-cost supermarket chain foray. Local government therefore announce a video competition at the local school, hoping to get something that will show Lafors from its best angle. Friends Dana and Aida promptly grab their smartphones and have at it – but somehow, their version of their hometown isn’t quite what the initiators had in mind. At the same time, the men and women in charge have made a pure propaganda film in preparation for the grand visit from Germany.

For Norwegians, life in a Swedish village is mostly associated with the stories of Astrid Lindgren, maypoles, and eternal summer. Amateurs paints a much more nuanced picture, and has received much praise in its home country for the realistic portrayal of life outside of the major cities in Sweden. Lafors, as so many real Swedish towns, is hit hard by depopulation; the local textile production which used to keep the place running has been outsourced to a third world country, and there is but one single coffee shop where locals can meet. This town even has immigrants, as opposed to the Lindgren children’s stories. Due to its use of amateur actors, the aptly named Amateurs achieves a semi-documentary feel – and both the funny scenes and the more serious ones are bound to resonate loudly with anyone who’s spent any time in rural Scandinavia.