Cannes winner 'Border' opens Carl International FIlm Festival 2018

Ali Abbasi's Border opens the second edition of Carl International Film Festival on August 24 and will enter the festival's new competition programme – Baltic Sea Competition. The film had it's world premiere during Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it was awarded Best Film in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section.

Ali Abbasis's second feature is a love story in the borderland between reality and fantasy. Border centers around the Swedish customs officer Tina, who with an almost sixth sence, can smell smugglers. When she encounters the mysterious Tore, her life turns upside down, and she slowly begins to understand herself and her background. The film, based on a short story by the Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, is a dark modern fairy tale that mixes Nordic folklore with perspectives on how the society treats ”the other”, racism and social indifferences in the shape of a romantic drama never seen before on screen. The main cast consists of Eva Melander (Flocking, Sebbe) and Eero Milonoff (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki).

Border is the first film to be announced in Carl International Film Festival's competitive programme Baltic Sea Competition. Ten films with a strong narrative and cinematic language that go hand in hand with the festival's values ​​of openness and freedom will compete for the awards Best Director and Best Script. The prizes consist of 25,000 SEK each together with an exclusive prize statuette. The winners will be selected by a jury and announced at a ceremony on August 28.

The full festival program will be presented on August 7.
Carl International Film Festival will be held August 24 – 29 in Karlskrona, Sweden.

Border (2018) 
Director: Ali Abbasi
Script: John Ajvide Lindqvist, Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf
Cast: Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jörgen Thorsson, Sten Ljunggren
Swedish distribution: TriArt Film

Opens Carl International Film Festival August 24

Swedish theatrical premiere August 31

Poland is going through huge changes with enormous social problems but also a sprouting film culture. In 2018 the festival presents a focus programme on Polish film with seminars, films and Polish film guests. One of the films featured in the Polish focus is last year's winner of the Stockholm Film Festival's Stockholm Impact Award, Anna Jadowskas Wild Roses.

Young mother Ewa returns to her family after a hospital stay. The family lives in the rural Poland where Ewa works on a plantation for wild roses. Her husband Andrzej comes back after several months of work abroad and strong frictions in the relationship appears at the same time as bad rumors revolve around the family in the small conversative village. When their youngest son suddenly disappears, everything is at its peak and dark secrets begin to emerge. Anna Jadowska portrays as confidently as tenderly the complexity of motherhood in an intense family drama with beautiful cinematography. 

Focus Poland is presented in collaboration with the Polish Institute.