Variety Critics’ Choice 2017 / Jordgubbslandet / Sweden 2016
Every summer, Polish workers come to the Swedish countryside to pick strawberries, trying to keep as low a profile as possible. But this year is different as one of the foreign fruit-pickers’ kids is old enough to take an interest in the host family’s daughter, complicating the entire arrangement.
Every summer, the Polish workers come to the Swedish countryside and pick strawberries. They arrive by caravan, tending the fields all day and keeping to themselves at night, while the landowners hardly bother to learn their names. It’s a cycle as sure as the seasons themselves, though this year is different as one of the foreign fruit-pickers’ kids is old enough to take an interest in the host family’s daughter, and there among the strawberries, a case of young love blossoms for the first time, complicating the entire arrangement – for the migrant workers are expected to make themselves invisible. In this sensitive, sun-kissed teenage romance, Swedish director Wiktor Ericsson invites us to recognize and identify with these faceless outsiders, asking for equality on the simplest terms. Though the setting may be specific, its appeal is universal, boasting a texture so rich, you can practically smell the ripe strawberries in the air.
Peter Debruge
93 min / Color, DCP
European premiere
Director Wiktor Ericsson
/ Screenplay Wiktor Ericsson
/ Dir. of Photography Nadim Carlsen
/ Music Hanan Townshend
/ Editor Erik Bäfving
/ Producer Erik Magnusson
/ Production Anagram Film & TV
/ Cast Staszek Cywka, Nelly Axelsson, Przemyslaw Sadowski, Julia Kijowska, Emilie Strandberg, Torkel Petersson, Jan Dravnel, Mateusz Król
/ Sales The Yellow Affair
/ Contact Swedish Film Institute
Wiktor Ericsson (b. 1973, Malmö, Sweden) is a screenwriter, script editor, and director. He studied theater and film at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts (Dramatiska Institutet). In 2010–11 he took part as head writer and co-creator on the TV series “Starke man” (2010) and “Halvvägs till himlen” (2013–15), the latter a comedy about a pastor who returns from Africa wanting to reform the church inside his small parish. Ericsson’s biographical feature-length doc on director Joe Sarno, who spent his life making sexploitation pictures, The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies (2013), is a surprising portrait of a filmmaker who took inspiration from Ingmar Bergman. Strawberry Days is Ericsson’s first foray into feature filmmaking.
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