Oscars: Sweden Selects ‘Border’ for Foreign-Language Category

Sweden has picked Border, a fantastic tale of trolls living and working in modern-day Scandinavia, as its entry for the 2019 foreign-language Oscar.

The second feature from Danish-Iranian director Ali Abbassi is based on a novella by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the writer of cult vampire classic Let ihe Right One In.

Border focuses on two misshapen outsiders who resemble the trolls of Nordic folklore. Tina (Eva Melander), who can sense human emotions, works as a glorified sniffer dog for Swedish border police but is shunned by her colleagues and society. Vore (Eero Milonoff), a fellow outcast, is defiant and proud in his beastly strangeness. The two meet and develop an animal attraction, but an exploration of Tina’s past leads to some explosive revelations.

The genre-bending drama premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar, where Neon snatched up the feature for North America.

Border was produced by Nina Bisgaard, Piodor Gustafsson and Petra Jonsson for Meta Film Stockholm, Spark Film & TV and Karnfilm in co-production with Meta Film Denmark together with Film i Vast, SVT and the Copenhagen Film Fund. The Swedish Film Institute and Nordisk Film & TV Fond provided production support. The film was also supported by the Danish Film Institute, MEDIA and Eurimages.

Films Boutique is handling worldwide sales.

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