Opening the Gothenburg Film Festival on January 23rd with The Silent Beekeeper is not only an honor but also a long-awaited homecoming for Love & Will director Marcus Karlsson and Ugly Stepsisters actor Adam Lundgren. The two met at a film festival several years ago and vowed to work together someday, but that wish finally became a reality when Carlson contacted Lundgren and told him he needed another hand on a script he couldn’t quite crack.
The friends spent a week in a secluded cabin and spent the next few months working on the script for The Silent Beekeeper, fine-tuning its poignant perspective on grief through the relationship between widow Olof and her teenage daughter Lise (Hedvig Nilsson). Lundgren, who was born in Gothenburg, had no previous screenwriting experience, but told Variety that he appreciated the time he and Carlson spent digging into their family history and the atmosphere of the small community from which they both came.
“I tried to force Marcus into the classic structure of the story, and he immediately said, ‘No, that’s not what I want to do,'” he says with a laugh. “After that, he showed me a lot of movies, and I understood it. Marcus is a very intuitive director. I call him a method director, because he’s right next to you, sweating with you in the scenes, always close.”
Films that Carlson showed Lundgren include Kelly Reichardt’s “Some Women” and Bruce Beresford’s “Tender Mercies,” particularly Robert Duvall’s performance in the 1983 drama.
Carlson praised the lead actors for capturing the essence of Duvall’s performance and for conveying Olof’s inner world “beautifully” despite having few lines. “It’s great for a director to have an actor like Adam, especially in this movie because I wanted to portray what was going on inside the character. I had a hard time writing the lines because I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to say and how much I should play Adam. When I saw Adam on set, it became clear to me.”
But communicating more with fewer words wasn’t Lundgren’s biggest challenge. To play Olof, the actor worked extensively on his accent to match that of Värmland County, where he shot the film over the summer. “In the movie, I speak in a very thick, very specific Swedish accent, which is usually used in comedies,” says the actor. “Two weeks before filming, I tried to get out of work because it was so hard. I’m glad I didn’t run away because making a film in this region and then speaking in a Stockholm accent is not authentic. It’s also an ode to the people of this region, because in Sweden we’re really bad at dealing with accents.”
“The Quiet Beekeeper” (Courtesy of Gothenburg Film Festival)
Filming in Sweden’s mid-west region had a huge impact not only on the work of the cast, but also on the overall feel of the film, with director Karlsson saying that filming The Silent Beekeeper in Värmland was “essential”. “This is a very culturally rich area,” says the director. “The temperature and feel of this film comes through so much through the landscape. I don’t think we could have shot this film anywhere else. That was very important to me.”
Shot with an Alexa Mini and a 16mm crop lens, the film has a grainy, concrete texture that permeates through the beautifully crafted opening credits. “I’m a nostalgic person,” Carlson points out. “I was thinking about my childhood and my hometown. For me, the texture of those memories is warm and grainy. I was recently watching something similar to what was done in ‘Train Dreams,’ and I was also inspired by the look of ‘EO.'” It’s such a great movie. ”
“It was very difficult to land what we had because we didn’t want it to feel like it was digital,” he adds. “We spent a lot of time tweaking the grain and mimicking it in the title sequence, so the whole movie had the same look and feel. We’re very happy with the results.”
Karlsson’s career has been deeply tied to the Gothenburg Film Festival, winning the Audience Award for 2014’s Dirtbags, and in 2018 he screened his feature debut Love & Will at the Swedish festival. Now, as the director prepares to open the festival that launched his career, he is taking time to reflect on his country’s film industry.
“Today, Swedish films are doing very well outside of Sweden,” he says. “But I wish I had more money to work on different stories and more original scripts. I think Sweden has a lot of great storytelling, even though it’s gotten a little American these days. This film proves that, in a way.”
Lundgren echoed his collaborators’ opinion, saying that today Swedish audiences “don’t want to go to the cinema to see Swedish films.” “We lost audience trust a few years ago, and I think we’re now starting to rebuild it. It’s going to take time, so more money would help. It’s like an old politician saying. The problem with movie people is that if you get paid, you work. If you get paid, you work. And this is a serious problem. And I think you have to look at the whole country, not just the big cities. If you only look at the capital, you’re missing important issues. “Sweden has a lot to tell the world. ”
“The Quiet Beekeeper” is produced by Lovisa Charlier Pinday for Mariedamfilm. It is also part of the Nordic Competition of the Gothenburg Film Festival.
The Gothenburg Film Festival runs from January 23rd to February. 1.
