A Hole in My Heart

Colour, 35 mm
Sweden, Denmark, 2004, 98 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Shot in the strictest secrecy, the film presents some of the most shocking and disturbing images in recent memory. It focuses on Rickard (Thorsten Flinck) and his son Eric (Björn Almroth). The shy kid spends most of his time in his room in their suburban apartment listening to techno. The father shoots amateur porn with his friend Geko and a girl named Tess. When the threesome drinks they lose all remaining inhibitions and act ever wilder. "We are all products of our history," says the director. "The film is about the past never ending and you go into the same apartment again and again and you try, in every way you can imagine, to get closer to another person and that other person is you. [But] film is not a diagnosis, it is a symptom...."

About the director

Lukas Moodysson (b. 1969, Malmö) studied at Stockholm’s Dramatiska Institutet. Following the short film Talk (Bara prata lite, 1997), he debuted in features in 1998 with a sensitive portrayal of adolescent sexuality, Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål), awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 1999 Karlovy Vary IFF. The film was distributed around the world and won a number of other awards, including four Swedish Film Awards and a nomination for Best European Film of the Year from the European Film Academy. Moodysson’s next movie, Together (Tillsammans, 2000), shown in the Horizons section at the 2001 Karlovy Vary IFF, was a hit in many countries and strengthened the director’s position on the international film scene. He then shot Lilya 4-ever (2002), which premiered at Venice (and was presented in the Horizons section at Karlovy Vary 2003); it was shown in more than forty countries, won five Swedish Film Awards and was again nominated by the European Film Academy for Best Film of the Year. The director has also made the documentary Terrorists (2003).