Karl Fredrik Lukas Moodysson (; born 17 January 1969) is a Swedish

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire ...

, short story writer and film director. First coming to prominence as an ambitious poet in the 1980s, he had his big domestic and international breakthrough directing the 1998 romantic film '' Show Me Love''. He has since directed a string of films with different styles and public appeal, as well as continued to write both poetry and novels. In 2007, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' ranked Moodysson eleventh in its list of the world’s best directors, describing his directorial style as “heartfelt and uncompromising.”

Early life

Born in

Lund Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish province of Scania, across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Scania County. The Öre ...

, Moodysson grew up in Åkarp,

Skåne County Skåne County ( sv, Skåne län, link=no ), sometimes referred to as Scania County in English, is the most southern county, or , of Sweden, basically corresponding to the traditional province Scania. It borders the counties of Halland, Krono ...

as an outcast, expressing himself through poetry. By the time he was 23 he had written five

poetry collection A poetry collection is often a compilation of several poems by one poet to be published in a single volume or chapbook. A collection can include any number of poems, ranging from a few (e.g. the four long poems in T. S. Eliot's ''Four Quarte ...

s and a

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself ...

published by

Wahlström & Widstrand Wahlström & Widstrand is a Swedish book publishing company. Wahlström & Widstrand was established in 1885 by two book sellers in Stockholm, Per Karl Wahlström and Wilhelm Widstrand. The company started publishing fiction in the 1890s and la ...

. He decided to move to film to produce works that were less introverted and could be enjoyed by a wider audience than poetry. After studying at what was then Sweden's only film school, the Dramatiska Institutet, he directed three

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

s before moving to features.

Filmmaking

Moodysson's directorial breakthrough came with ''Fucking Åmål'' (retitled '' Show Me Love'' in English-speaking countries). A classical love story, filmed in a highly naturalistic, almost documentary style, it is set in the small and boring Swedish town of Åmål, and follows two girls who awkwardly fall in love. The film was a huge success with the Swedish public and critics. It won four

Guldbagge Award The Guldbagge Awards ( sv, Guldbaggen, en, Gold scarab) is an official and annual Swedish film awards ceremony honoring achievements in the Swedish film industry. Winners are awarded a statuette depicting a rose chafer, better known by the nam ...

s, including best film, best actress (shared by the two girls

Rebecka Liljeberg Rebecka Månstråle Liljeberg (born 13 May 1981) is a Swedish former actress who starred in the Swedish film '' Show Me Love'' (''Fucking Åmål'') (1998). Early life and career Rebecka was born in the town of Turinge, Sweden to an 18-year-old ...

and

Alexandra Dahlström Lena Marina Alexandra Dahlström (born 12 February 1984) is a Swedish actress and film director. Career Dahlström gained international attention in 1998, after starring as "Elin" in the film '' Show Me Love''. For this, she won the Guldbagge ...

), best direction and best script. It was a colossal hit in Sweden. His next film, 2000's '' Together'' (Tillsammans), followed the antics of life in a commune in suburban Stockholm in the 1970s. It achieved a sense of the era through extensive use of period Swedish

progg Progg was a left-wing and anti-commercial musical movement in Sweden that began in the late 1960s and became more widespread in the 1970s. Not to be confused with the English expressions " progressive music" or "prog rock," progg is a contract ...

and pop songs, including

ABBA ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The grou ...

's hit "

SOS is a Morse code distress signal (), used internationally, that was originally established for maritime use. In formal notation is written with an overscore line, to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" ...

." Moodysson followed up these two sunny, cheerfully optimistic films with the brutal '' Lilya 4-ever'' in 2002, included in many American critics' top ten lists the following year. The mainly

Russian language Russian (russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, link=no, ) is an East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians, and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living E ...

film follows a girl living in an unspecified country in the former

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

(filmed in Estonia) as she is abandoned by her mother, drops out of school, is forced into prostitution, and then is kidnapped into sex slavery. Moodysson has said he could not have made the film without his strong Christian beliefs. The frequent religious fantasies that Lilja has are the only tender spots in the bleak world Moodysson presents. At the time of its release, critic

Dave Kehr David Kehr (born 1953) is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the '' Chicago Reader'' and the ''Chicago Tribune,'' he later wrote a weekly column for ''The New York Times'' on DVD releases. He later became a ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' declared Moodysson to be "Sweden's most praised filmmaker since Ingmar Bergman". His 2004 film, the controversial '' A Hole in My Heart'' (Ett hål i mitt hjärta) is more an experimental film than a traditional narrative. He has said it is intentionally designed to be off-putting to the audience. It intersperses frequent screeching noises, close-ups of female genital surgery, and other jarring elements into a vague plot about two pornographers shooting their latest video in a filthy apartment, with an attention-craving porn starlet, while the webbed-handed son of one of the men stays holed up in his bedroom. It received a special certificate for shocking images in Sweden and received terrible reviews from the vast majority of critics. He followed this with another even more experimental film, 2006's ''

Container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

'', featuring narration by actress Jena Malone. The only sound in the movie is a

stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...

narrative, which is only loosely related to the visual content. Moodysson's work took a new turn with ''

Mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...

'', released 23 January 2009. Unlike his previous two efforts, it is a narrative film and his first English-language piece, about a successful New York couple, their daughter and her Filipino nanny. Meanwhile, his 2013 film '' We are the Best!'' (Vi är bäst!), based on the comic book '' Aldrig Godnatt'' by his wife Coco Moodysson, returns to the themes and style of ''Show Me Love'' and ''Together'', set in 1982 and following the exploits of a teenage three-piece girl punk-band. All of Moodysson's feature films have been produced, or co-produced, by Memfis Film, a small Swedish production company based in Stockholm. Memfis' CEO and producer Lars Jönsson seeks to establish long-term working relationships with directors and support even less commercially oriented projects such as Moodysson's ''A Hole in My Heart'' and ''Container''. 2019 saw the premiere of the TV series '' Gösta'', Moodysson's first foray into television and HBO's first commissioned drama series out of Scandinavia.

Personal life

Moodysson is an outspoken advocate of left-wing and

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

politics, and a deeply committed Christian. He lives in

Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal popul ...

with his wife, artist Coco Moodysson. They have three children.

Filmography

*'' Det var en mörk och stormig natt'' (1995) *'' En uppgörelse i den undre världen'' (1996) *'' Talk'' (''Bara prata lite'') (1997) *'' Show Me Love'' (''Fucking Åmål'') (1998) *'' Together'' (''Tillsammans'') (2000) *'' The New Country'' (''Det nya landet'') (2000) *'' Lilya 4-ever'' (2002) *'' Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced'' (''Terrorister - en film om dom dömda'') (2003) *'' A Hole in My Heart'' (''Ett hål i mitt hjärta'') (2004) *''

'' (2006) *''

'' (''Mammut'') (2009) *'' We Are the Best!'' (''Vi är bäst!'') (2013) *'' Gösta'' (TV series, 2019)

Bibliography

* ''Det spelar ingen roll var blixtarna slår ner'' (1987) - poems * ''Och andra dikter'' (1988) - poems * ''Evangelium enligt Lukas Moodysson'' (1989) - poems * ''Vitt blod'' (1990) - novel * ''Kött'' (1991) - poems * ''Souvenir'' (1996) - poems * ''Mellan sexton och tjugosex'' (2001) - selected works * ''Vad gör jag här'' (2002) - long poem * ''Vårdcentralen Fontanellen'' (2005) (with Coco Moodysson) - comic book * ''Apo kryp hos'' (2006) - poems * ''Container'' (2009) - screenplay and documentation * ''Döden & Co.'' (2011) - novel * ''Tolv månader i skugga'' (2012) - novel

Awards and honors

*1999:

Teddy Award The Teddy Award is an international film award for films with LGBT topics, presented by an independent jury as an official award of the Berlin International Film Festival (the Berlinale). In the most part, the jury consists of organisers of gay ...

for Best Feature Film – ''Fucking Åmål'' *2000: Gijón International Film Festival: Best Director – ''Together''. Best Script – ''Together''. Young Jury Prize for Best Feature Film – ''Together''. *2002: Gijón International Film Festival: Best Feature Film – ''Lilya 4-ever''. Young Jury Prize for Best Feature Film – ''Lilya 4-ever''. *2003: Stig Dagerman Prize

References

External links

* *
Interview with Moodysson about ''Lilya 4-ever''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moodysson, Lukas 1969 births Living people People from Lund Swedish film directors Swedish poets 20th-century Swedish novelists 21st-century Swedish novelists Swedish-language writers Swedish Christians Swedish feminists Best Director Guldbagge Award winners Best Screenplay Guldbagge Award winners Male feminists Male screenwriters Swedish male poets Swedish male novelists 20th-century Swedish male writers 21st-century male writers