Swedish director Axel Petersén´s feature film debut has been officially selected for Berlin International Film Festiva´s International Forum of New Cinema.
The Forum section is the most daring of their sections of the Berlinale, focusing on yet-to-be-discovered cinematic landscapes, which straddle the line between art and cinema.
AVALON celebrated its World Premiere in Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Discovery Award for Best Feature Film debut, being the first Swedish film in history to win the award. It received much appraise from critics worldwide. AVALON is heading to open Gothenburg Film Festival in January and Berlin International Film Festival will be AVALON´s third festival screening.
Axel Petersén (1979) is the director of several acclaimed short films and his latest short film THE TRACKS OF MY TEARS 2 (2011) had its premiere in La Biennale di Venizia. Petersén is trained at the Czech film school FAMU and the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts.
The film is produced by Erika Wasserman and Jesper Kurlandsky, production companies being Idyll AB and Fasad AB (THE APE, 2009, BURROWING, 2009) and is supported by The Swedish Film Institute. AVALON is domestically released 24 February 2012.
AVALON's own website can be found here.
AVALON
”An assured, darkly humorous portrait of an affluent class in hedonistic self-denial, AVALON marks the arrival of a promising new voice in Swedish filmmaking.”
FIPRESCI Jury
“Petersen is a talent to watch, and specialty houses could do respectable biz with a film that echoes some of the best of recent Scandinavian art cinema.“
Variety
“AVALON rests in the grey area between the usual meandering, existential Swedish fare and the chilling Nordic crime blockbusters like Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Avalon is something of a hybrid, a meditative and very Scandinavian film, but it's not just a matter of combining Jo Nesbø, Henning Mankell and a dash of Lars von Trier. Instead, it's about knowing when it's time to leave the party, a story inspired by Petersén's aunt, who still lives the party lifestyle.”
The National Post
“AVALON is unforgiving, a short experiment in an austere poetry that no fan of the bleaker side of Scandinavian cinema should miss".
IndieWire
“A wrenching, darkly funny debut feature. There´s a savage humour to Axel Petersén´s AVALON that´s rare in a first time feature filmmaker“.
Torontoist