Official Selection - Competition 2005 / The Queen of Sheba's Pearls / Sweden, United Kingdom 2004
England, 1944. On Jack Bradley’s eighth birthday he loses his mother Emily. Eight years later, on the same February day, Jack celebrates his sixteenth birthday, and a young woman, a Swede named Nancy Ackermann, who looks surprisingly like the deceased Emily, knocks at his grandmother’s door....
On the same day Jack Bradley celebrates his eighth birthday he loses his mother. It’s the war year 1944 and Londoners’ lives are threatened by everpresent danger. Emily Bradley manages to send her son to his grandmother Laura’s in the country, then is killed immediately afterward in the wreckage of a spitfire returning home from action over the French coast. Eight years later on the same February day Jack celebrates his sixteenth birthday, and in London the king dies. That same day a young woman, Swede Nancy Ackermann, who looks surprisingly like the deceased Emily, knocks at old Laura’s door and asks for help. Her disquieting presence in the house brings a spark into Jack’s hitherto calm life and causes a gale to blow through the entire family, whose desires, envies and secrets needed airing long ago. This period film, set in the English countryside, tells about lustrous things like a family’s pearl necklace – about adolescence, desire and memory.
123 min / Color, 35 mm
International premiere
Director Colin Nutley
/ Screenplay Colin Nutley
/ Dir. of Photography Jens Fischer
/ Music Per Andréasson
/ Editor Perry Schaffer
/ Producer Maritha Norstedt, Judith Hackett
/ Production Sweetwater, AB, koprodukce/coproduction: Svensk Filmindustri, AB
/ Cast Helena Bergström, Lorcan Cranitch, Lindsay Duncan, Tim Dutton, Elizabeth Spriggs, Peter Vaughan
/ Contact Svensk Filmindustri, AB, Sweetwater, AB, Swedish Film Institute
www: www.sfinternational.se/campaign/qos
Colin Nutley (b. 1944, Gosport, England) studied at Portsmouth Art College and then worked as a documentarist for the BBC and Channel 4. While shooting a miniseries about a British au pair, “Annika” (1984), he ended up in Sweden where he also shot a documentary about life in a small country town. This later inspired him to make House of Angels (Änglagård, 1992) and the sequel House of Angels: The Second Summer (Änglagård – andra sommaren, 1994), one of the most popular Swedish films of recent years. He remained faithful to Sweden in his feature debut as well, the black comedy The Ninth Company (Nionde kompaniet, 1987). His other films include the love story Black Jack (1990), the black comedy The Last Dance (Sista dansen, 1993), the tragicomedy Such Is Life (Sånt är livet, 1996), the period tale Under the Sun (Under solen, 1998; nominated for an Oscar, Special Jury Prize at San Sebastian), Gossip (2000) and Paradise (Paradiset, 2003).
Svensk Filmindustri, AB
Greta Garbos Väg 13, SE - 16986, Stockholm
Sweden
Phone: +46 868 035 00
Fax: +46 871 044 22
E-mail: [email protected]
Sweetwater, AB
Grev Turegatan 21, SE 114 28, Stockholm
Sweden
Phone: +46 8 662 1470
Fax: +46 8 662 1471
E-mail: [email protected]
Swedish Film Institute
Box 27126, S-102 52, Stockholm
Sweden
Phone: +46 866 511 00
Fax: +46 866 118 20
E-mail: [email protected]
Ann-Kristin Westerberg
Distributor
Colin Nutley
Film Director
Helena Bergström
Actor
Anita Simovic
Sales Agent
Gunnar Almér
Film Institution Rep.
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