Jimmie

4-year-old Jimmie has a Fjällräven backpack and long, blonde locks. He is on a weird journey with his dad and some other people: They walk a lot, and Jimmie doesn’t know where they’re going. He only knows that they’re going to meet up with Mum again – Dad promised him that. But why won’t she ever show up? And why do they have to hurry so much all the time, to get away from some people who’re talking a strange language?

Something is at stake in the films of director Jesper Ganslandt: In his breakthrough feature Falkenberg Farewell (2006), about a group of young people spending their last summer together in their hometown, as well as in his more recent works such as the thriller The Ape (2009), there is a very distinct nerve. This is in every way true about Ganslandt’s latest feature Jimmie. The director himself plays the main protagonist, as the father of a young child (played by Ganslandt's real-life son, Hunter), on the run through a Sweden and Europe ravaged by war. We follow the father-son duo through several timelines and in ever changing landscapes. Because everything is presented as if through the eyes of little Jimmie, their flight becomes more and more confusing and episodic – but at the same time also more beautiful and fascinating. And maybe even closer to the truth.

Jimmie is an ambitious, fierce and nerve-wrecking film, which puts the ongoing refugee crisis into an emphatic perspective: What would you do if you were the one running, if you were the one having to put your life at stake in order to save your child?