Mattias Löw (born 17 September 1970) is a Swedish film director, documentary filmmaker and photographer based in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

and

Motala Motala () is a locality and the seat of Motala Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden with 29,823 inhabitants (41,956 in the entire municipality) in 2010. It is the third largest city of Östergötland, following Linköping and Norrköping. M ...

, who specializes in social issues documentaries and

documentary photography Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle events or environments both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life. It is typically undertaken as professional pho ...

. He gives lectures and workshops on the topics of storytelling and documentary filmmaking, in addition to occasional acting.

Life and career

Mattias Löw was born in

Västerhaninge Västerhaninge () is a locality situated in Haninge Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden. It had 15,134 inhabitants in 2010. It is connected to Stockholm by commuter rail. Västerhaninge borders the large Hanveden forest to the north, the Jor ...

Haninge Municipality Haninge Municipality (''Haninge kommun'') is a municipality in Stockholm County in east central Sweden. Its seat is located in Handen, a part of the Stockholm urban area. Haninge Municipality was formed in 1971 when ''Västerhaninge'' and ''Öst ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. After high school, he went on to study cinema arts and history at

Stockholm University Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, so ...

and screenwriting for film and TV at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

–

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. At UCLA he became interested in documentary filmmaking and eventually started his first production company.

1990s

Beginning his career in the early 1990s as a short film and music video director. During his studies at UCLA, Mattias Löw was a nominee and received honourable mention at the prestigious

Diane Thomas Diane Renee Thomas (January 7, 1946 – October 21, 1985) was an American screenwriter who wrote the 1984 film ''Romancing the Stone'' and also co-wrote Steven Spielberg's 1989 film ''Always.'' She was also originally hired to write the third ' ...

Screenwriting Awards in 1997, presented by

Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...

Michael Douglas Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AF ...

Walter F. Parkes Walter F. Parkes (born April 15, 1951) is an American producer, screenwriter, and media executive. The producer of more than 50 films, including the ''Men in Black'' series and '' Minority Report,'' he is the co-founder and co-chairman of Dre ...

Kathleen Turner Mary Kathleen Turner (born June 19, 1954) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, and two Tony Awards. Turner became widely k ...

and

James L. Brooks James Lawrence Brooks (born May 9, 1940) is an American director, producer, screenwriter and co-founder of Gracie Films. His television and film work includes ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'', ''Taxi'', ''The Simpsons'', '' Broadcast News'', ''As G ...

. Upon return to his native Sweden from Los Angeles in the late 1990s, Mattias turned to documentaries and has won acclaim from critics and audiences alike, and been the recipient of several international television, film and journalism awards as well as arts grants and stipends for his social-, educational- and sport-themed documentaries primarily made for Swedish public broadcaster SVT –

Sveriges Television Sveriges Television AB ("Sweden's Television Stock Company"), shortened to SVT (), is the Sweden, Swedish national public broadcasting, public television broadcaster, funded by a public service tax on personal income set by the Riksdag (national ...

and Canadian public broadcaster

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...

–

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the government. ...

2000s

Since 2008 Mattias Löw collaborates with Sweden's number one adventure destination, the ephemeral

Ice Hotel An ice hotel is a temporary hotel made up of snow and sculpted blocks of ice. Ice hotels, dependent on sub-freezing temperatures, are constructed from ice and snow and typically have to be rebuilt every year. Ice hotels exist in several countri ...

Jukkasjärvi Jukkasjärvi (; Sami: ''Čohkkiras'') is a locality situated in Kiruna Municipality, Norrbotten County, Sweden with 548 inhabitants in 2010. It is situated at 321 meters elevation. The name is of Northern Sami origin, where ''Čohkkirasjávri'' ...

, Swedish Laponia, making documentary shorts about the artists and designers creating a temporary hotel made out of snow and sculpted blocks of ice. Throughout the 2000s, Mattias Löw conducted classes and workshops at various schools and universities, including a senior external lectureship with focus on documentary and ethnographic storytelling in the Faculty of Humanities at

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

, in addition to lectures and workshops on storytelling for user experience and design at

Umeå Institute of Design The Umeå Institute of Design, UID, is an institute within Umeå University. UID opened in 1989 and is designed and equipped solely for the teaching of industrial design, transportation design, and interaction design. The Umeå Institute of Design ...

2010s

In June 2010 Mattias Löw released The Referee, a highly controversial SVT –

documentary film about the Swedish

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

referee Martin Hansson and his tumultuous road to ref at the

2010 FIFA World Cup , image = 2010 FIFA World Cup.svg , size = 200px , caption = ''Ke Nako. (Tswana and Sotho for "It's time") Celebrate Africa's Humanity'It's time. Celebrate Africa's Humanity'' (English)''Dis tyd. Vier Afrika se mensd ...

. Martin Hansson was the referee in the dramatic second of two 2009 Republic of Ireland v France football matches during the playoffs for the

. Mattias Löw's documentary TV-series The Other Sport made for SVT –

about the development of women's football since the 1960s was released in time for

UEFA Women's Euro 2013 The 2013 UEFA Women's Championship, commonly referred to as Women's Euro 2013, was the 11th European Championship for List of women's national association football teams#UEFA, women's national football teams organised by UEFA. The final tournament ...

which was played in Sweden. The series centers around former and present football stars

Pia Sundhage Pia Mariane Sundhage (, born 13 February 1960) is a Swedish football manager and former professional player. She is the head coach of the Brazil women's national team. As a player, Sundhage played most of her career as a forward and retired as ...

Marta Vieira da Silva Marta Vieira da Silva (born 19 February 1986), known mononymously as Marta (), is a Brazilian professional footballer who plays as a forward for the Orlando Pride in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and the Brazil national team. Mart ...

Lotta Schelin Charlotta Eva Schelin (born 27 February 1984) is a Swedish former professional footballer who most recently played as a striker for FC Rosengård of the Damallsvenskan. She made her debut for the Sweden national team in March 2004 and was app ...

Kosovare Asllani Kosovare Asllani (born 29 July 1989) is a Swedish professional footballer who plays as a striker or an attacking midfielder for Italian first division Serie A club AC Milan and the Sweden national team. Nicknamed "Kosse", Asllani possesses grea ...

Gunilla Paijkull Gunilla Elisabeth Paijkull (born 5 September 1943) is a Swedish football coach and former player. She was head coach of the Sweden women's national football team at the 1991 FIFA Women's World Cup. Paijkull, previously Gunilla Karlsson, was a f ...

Anette Börjesson Lilian Anette Börjesson (born 11 November 1954) is a retired female badminton player and footballer from Sweden. Badminton Börjesson is a five time women's singles champion at the Swedish National Badminton Championships and was a silver m ...

and Elisabeth Leidinge among others. The three episode limited series attracted over a million TV-viewers in Sweden. January 2015 Mattias Löw received

Svenska Spel Svenska Spel ("Swedish Bets") is a state-owned company operating in the regulated gambling market in Sweden. For many years, state-owned Svenska Spel was the only company permitted to offer online gambling to people in Sweden, whether it be casino ...

and the Swedish Sportjournalist Federation's Grant at the Swedish Sports Award – Svenska idrottsgalan. In 2015, his documentary film All the World in a Design School created headlines and political debate as it criticized the introduction of steep tuition fees for non-European students at Swedish universities. The film follows a Turkish and a Chinese student during a study year at one of the world's top-ranked industrial design schools, UID –

. 2016, Mattias Löw released the one-hour documentary

The Indian Priest ''The Indian Priest'' is a 2016 Swedish-Indian documentary film about a Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (C.M.I.) Catholic priest from south India, Father Raphael Kurian, who is sent to modern and secular Sweden as a missionary on the request from ...

about Raphael Kurian, on a

reverse mission Reverse mission is a Christian missiological concept focusing on the late-20th-century reversal of early missionizing efforts, whereby Christians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America send missionaries to Europe and North America. History The mo ...

. Raphael is a

Catholic priest The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms ''priest'' refers only ...

from Kerala in south India arriving in secular Sweden, and the documentary emphasizes the reversing of the direction of earlier missionary efforts. Mattias Löw's photopoetry exhibition Aatman – The Universal Spirit with images from the annual Burning Man

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

event in

Black Rock Desert __NOTOC__ The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region (in the Great Basin shrub steppe eco-region) of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a si ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

debuted at

Linköping Linköping () is a city in southern Sweden, with around 105,000 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality and the capital of Östergötland County. Linköping is also the episcopal see of the Diocese of Linköping (Church ...

Art Gallery in November 2018. The exhibition was the first large scale public art gallery display of photographs from Burning Man in Sweden. Part of the exhibition is on permanent display in Vallastaden,

. At the beginning of 2019 Mattias Löw guided a group of recently arrived refugees in a photography exhibition at

Art Gallery. The works showed a reality of asylum seeking youth arriving in Sweden during the

European migrant crisis The 2015 European migrant crisis, also known internationally as the Syrian refugee crisis, was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe in 2015, when 1.3 million people came to the continent to reques ...

2020s

In the wake of the

COVID-19 pandemic in India The COVID-19 pandemic in India is a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). As of , according to Indian government figures, India has the second-highest n ...

Mattias Löw created the

photo-essay A photographic essay or photo-essay for short is a form of visual storytelling, a way to present a narrative through a series of images. A photo essay delivers a story using a series of photographs and brings the viewer along a narrative journey. E ...

exhibition 98 Days, dealing with worry, uncertainty and social distancing during the 2020

lockdown A lockdown is a restriction policy for people, community or a country to stay where they are, usually due to specific risks (such as COVID-19) that could possibly harm the people if they move and interact freely. The term is used for a prison ...

. A digital exhibition with online viewing rooms of the project first appeared at Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen, Denmark during June, 2020. During July 2021, Swedish and Norwegian news media drew attention to the fact that Mattias Löw together with

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

-nominated producer Mathias Fjellström is working on a documentary film about a red scarf, originally a gift from

Skellefteå Skellefteå (, locally ) is a city in Västerbotten County, Sweden. It is the seat of Skellefteå Municipality, which had 73,246 inhabitants in 2021. The city is historically industrial, with mining being a large part of that industry, especial ...

Municipality to relocated residents around Christmas 2017 that appeared on one of the insurgents during 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. In February 2022, Swedish newspapers from

Norrbotten Norrbotten (), known in English as North Bothnia, is a Swedish province (''landskap'') in northernmost Sweden. It borders south to Västerbotten, west to Swedish Lapland, and east to Finland. Administration The traditional provinces of Swede ...

reported that Mattias Löw was making a documentary TV-series for

about an opera diva from Tornedalen or

Meänmaa (), or sometimes Torne Valley or Torne River Valley ( fi, Tornionlaakso; sv, Tornedalen) lies at the border of Sweden and Finland. It is named after the Torne River flowing through the valley and into the Gulf of Bothnia. Geographically the t ...

, a culturally rich region at the border of Sweden and Finland. In the summer of 2022, when the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

's restrictions were lifted, Mattias Löw exhibited photographs, essays and video works under the title Fångad i rädsla - Frozen in Fear about his experiences of worry, uncertainty and social distancing in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

in the spring and summer of 2020.

Works

Exhibitions

* Aatman – The Universal Spirit, 2018 * 98 Days, 2020 * Fångad i rädsla - Frozen in Fear, 2022 * Burning Man, Permanent Installation from 2022

Bibliography

* Aatman – The Universal Spirit, 2018

Filmography

* Wounderland, 2001 * Ice Carosello, 2010 * The Referee, 2010 * The Other Sport, 2013 * All the World in a Design School, 2015 *

, 2016 * The Tao of Cat, 2018 * Spruce Woods, 2019 * Frozen in Fear, 2022

Awards & Nominations

* IMDb AwardsAwards for Mattias Löw
IMDb. Retrieved on 8 July 2020

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Low, Mattias 1970 births Living people Journalists from Stockholm Swedish documentary film directors Swedish documentary filmmakers Swedish film directors Swedish film producers Swedish television directors Swedish television producers Swedish-language film directors English-language film directors Swedish cinematographers 21st-century Swedish journalists Swedish television journalists Swedish photographers