Oscar Nominee ‘Border’ Wins Best Film, Best Actress at Sweden’s Guldbagge Honors

Ali Abbasi’s genre-bending fantasy tale Border, about gender-fluid trolls living in modern-day Sweden, was the big winner Monday night at the Guldbagge Awards, Sweden’s leading film honors, picking up five trophies, including for best film.

Based on a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist (author of the cult vampire fable Let the Right One In), Border draws inspiration from Scandinavian folklore for its tale of two misfits who embrace their otherness.

Eva Melander, almost unrecognizable without the prosthetics and the extra 40 pounds she gained for the lead role in Border, picked up best actress honors, while Finnish co-star Eero Milonoff was named best supporting actor. Border also scooped several technical awards, including a best hair and makeup nod for Goran Lundstrom, Pamela Goldammer and Erica Spetzig. Lundstrom and Goldammer are up for an Oscar this year in the same category.

Reconstructing Utoya, the story of the 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway, told by four survivors, won the best director award for Carl Javer, as well as the best documentary prize.

Another big winner was Dominik Locher’s Goliath, a family drama about a young dad-to-be who tries to make up for feelings of inadequacy by bulking up with bodybuilding and steroids, which secured honors for best actor (Joakim Sallquist), screenplay (Peter Gronlund), editing (Dino Jonsater) and original score (Johan Testad). 

Another Oscar contender, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Japanese drama Shoplifters, took home the best foreign film Guldbagge, beating out Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War.

Cold War and Shoplifters will go head-to-head at the Oscars next month, where they are both nominees in the best foreign-language film category, alongside frontrunner Roma from Alfonso Cuaron. 

A complete list of winners of the 2019 Guldbagge Awards follows.

Best Film
Border, produced by Nina Bisgaard, Piodor Gustafsson and Petra Jonsson

Best Director
Carl Javer for Reconstructing Utoya

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Eva Melander in Border

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Joakim Sallquist in Goliath

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Lena Nilsson in Videoman

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Eero Milonoff in Border

Best Screenplay
Peter Gronlund for Goliath

Best Cinematography
Kristoffer Jonsson for Garden Lane

Best Editing
Dino Jonsater for Goliath

Best Costume
Ingrid Sjogren for The Cake General

Best Sound/Sound Design
Christian Holm for Border

Best Makeup
Goran Lundstrom, Pamela Goldammer and Erica Spetzig for Border

Best Original Score
Johan Testad for Goliath

Best Set Design
Ulrika von Vegesack for A Moon of My Own

Best Visual Effects
Peter Hjorth, Mikael Windelinoch Christian Sjostedt for Border

Best Short Film
The Martyr by Ahmed Abdullahi

Best Documentary Film
Reconstructing Utoya by Carl Javer

Best Foreign Film
Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda