Mill Valley Film Festival 2018
04 Oct 2018, 12.00 AM
The 41st Mill Valley Film Festival will take place on October 4-14 and this year's festival presents the two Swedish films Becoming Astrid (Unga Astrid) and Border (Gräns).
Becoming Astrid (Unga Astrid)
Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen
Before there was Pippi (Longstocking), there was the talented journalist and aspiring writer, Astrid Lindgren. And prior to her emergence as a beloved, world-renowned children's author, there was the free-spirited Astrid Ericsson (Alba August, A Serious Game, MVFF 2016), a small-town teenager bursting with anarchic energy, doing the Charleston by herself at the village dance. This superb coming-of-age narrative connects the dots between Lindgren's most famous character, Pippi, and her own remarkable defiance of social norms, as a fiercely independent-minded career woman and unwed mother, by choice. Astrid's restless curiosity leads her into, and out of, an affair with her married boss-and the resulting pregnancy left-turns the film from biopic territory into a taut drama about the struggles of single motherhood in 1920s Sweden. Gorgeously shot (the camera is always hurrying after Astrid, trying to catch up), the storytelling is swift and understated, perfectly suited to the pioneering author and her unforgettable legacy.
Director Pernille Fischer Christensen studied at the National Film School of Denmark. She received the Cinéfondations 3rd Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her student short India (1999) and won the Danish Film Academy's Best Short Film Award for Habibti My Love. Her debut feature film, A Soap (2006), had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, winning the Silver Bear and the Best Debut Film Award, and going on to win other awards. Her films include A Family (2010), winner of a FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, and Someone You Love (2014).
Show times:
When: Thursday, October 11 at 6:00 pm
Where: Lark Theatre, 549 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur
When: Friday, October 12 at 2:00 pm
Where: Lark Theatre, 549 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur, CA 94939
When: Saturday, October 13 at 2:30 pm
Where: The Rafael 3, The Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth Street
For tickets and more information, click here.
Border (Gräns)
Director: Ali Abbasi
Talent expected in attendance.
Customs agent Tina has a special talent for sniffing out all manner of malfeasance using her extraordinary sense of smell. Subjected to crude comments from co-workers and cruel treatment at home from her sponger boyfriend, Tina has become a target-for all the ways she is different from everyone else. But when she meets the mysterious Vore, the foundations of her universe begin to crumble. Based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In, MVFF 2008),
Border is a gender- and genre-bending love story combining equal parts magical realism, dark humor, and spot-on contemporary social critique, whirled into a jaw-dropping tale in which absolutely nothing-and no one-is who, or what, they seem. Featuring the prodigious acting talents of Eva Melander (Sebbe, MVFF 2010) and Eero Milonoff (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, MVFF 2016), director Ali Abbasi won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes for this unforgettable film.
Ali Abbasi is an Iranian-born Swedish director. His films include the short, M for Markus (2011); his feature debut, Shelley (2016); and Border (2018), which won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes.
Show times:
When: Wednesday, October 10 at 6:00 pm
Where: The Rafael 2, The Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth Street
When: Thursday, October 11 at 9:15 pm
Where: the Lark Theatre, Lark Theatre, 549 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur
For tickets and more information, click here.
Last updated 24 Sep 2018, 9.49 AM
