A new generation of Scandinavian film-makers is making waves, following in the footsteps of Ingmar Bergman, Lars von Trier and the Dogme movement, with three directors in competition at Cannes this year.

Swedish cult director Ruben Ostlund, who won the 2017 Palme d’Or for The Square, is back with Triangle of Sadness. 

He is joined by two other films from rising stars with immigrant backgrounds: Boy from Heaven, by Sweden’s Tarik Saleh and Danish-Iranian Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider.

Danish director Lars von Trier won the top prize in 2000 for ‘Dancer in the Dark’. Photo: Loic Venance/AFP

Scandinavian films have been a fixture at the Cannes Film Festival over the years. 

Denmark’s Bille August is one of a handful to win the Palme d’Or twice and Von Trier won the top prize in 2000 for Dancer in the Dark, while Bergman was the first-ever recipient of an honorary Palme in 1997 for his body of work.

Nordic film-makers often “push the limits of cinematographic language”, said Claus Christensen, editor of Danish film magazine Ekko.

“It’s entertainment, but (the goal is) also to challenge the audience. The director has the freedom to explore whatever his artistic vision is,” he told AFP.

Abbasi, 40, is making his second appearance at Cannes, after winning the newcomer’s Un Certain Regard section in 2018 with Border, an eccentric troll-fantasy film about a border guard.

His new film Holy Spider is the gritty story of a serial killer “cleansing” the Iranian holy city of Mashhad of street prostitutes.

Photo dated June 2, 2003, shows Swedish legendary movie director and playwriter the late Ingmar Bergman who won an honorary Palme in 1997. Photo: Jonas Ekstromer/Scanpix Sweden/AFP

“You can’t pigeonhole him. When you think you have him, he’s a shapeshifter and does something else,” his producer Jacob Jarek told AFP.

Abbasi recently finished filming episodes for the upcoming post-apocalyptic HBO series The Last of Us, based on a video game.

That versatility defines others from his generation, said Jarek.

Immigrant perspectives

The previous wave of Danish film-makers, such as von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, won international acclaim with the Dogme movement, which set strict film-making rules aimed at ensuring realism in their films.

But the new generation is “more willing to work with genre, to mix genres: to do comedy and lighter stuff mixed with dark stuff,” said Jarek.

Both Abbasi’s and Saleh’s films draw heavily on their immigrant backgrounds.

Abbasi left Tehran for Sweden in 2002, while Saleh was born in Stockholm to a Swedish mother and Egyptian father. 

Saleh’s background was essential to making Boy from Heaven, he told AFP.

“I think there’s a reason a lot of directors, historically, have immigrant backgrounds, like (Francis Ford) Coppola and Milos Forman,” the 50-year-old said.

“You’re positioned on the inside and outside of something. In a way, that’s the director’s role... to see both the similarities and the differences.”

Hidden world

Boy from Heaven is a dark thriller set in Cairo that follows a poor boy granted a scholarship to the prestigious Al-Azhar University, who finds himself drawn into a brutal power struggle between Egypt’s religious and political elite.

Being an outsider was crucial, Saleh said.

“No one has ever gone into (Al-Azhar University) with a camera before. (An Egyptian film-maker) would go to prison if they did,” he told AFP.

A former graffiti artist, Saleh grew up with a film-maker father and worked in his film studio before attending art school in Alexandria. 

In addition to directing episodes of Westworld and Ray Donovan, his 2017 film The Nile Hilton Incident, also set in Cairo, won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.

Meanwhile, Ostlund, the doyen of the trio with six features under his belt, is bringing his first English-language film to Cannes.

Triangle of Sadness is a satire about passengers on a luxury cruise who end up stranded on a deserted island, lampooning the fashion world and ultra-rich, with a scathing criticism of society’s focus on beauty.