Living

The past week I happened to see three 2025 films that had in common the theme of pains and deficits in close relationships…

Learning to engage with stories through film has been a major field of precious discovery for me in the past decades. It has given me more than one life. It has offered me a rich palette of human and cultural colors in life’s diverse experiences and challenges. I have been allowed to share in the challenges, the joys and the griefs people have experienced in a multitude of cultural situations, some very similar to my own, many very different to mine. It has helped me to understand better my own perceptions, emotions, strengths and weaknesses. I am sure that it has enhanced my empathy, to understand better how the same experience can impact people in very different ways.

The word that stays with me after the closure of our local Gothenburg film festival is imagination. I am once more impressed by the potential of film to stir and exercise the imagination. I have been allowed to think thoughts and explore emotions that I would not have done without the films I’ve watched. The ability to see beyond our currently experienced reality towards new possibilities is so important for our emotional well-being. It energizes, reduces stress and enhances empathy.  

From 2019 onward I have shared with you my list of the best films of the past year. My list contains the films that I truly care about and have communicated something to me that I continue to carry with me. They have the potential to prompt valuable discussions aligned with our Nexus key ideas. Of course, this list is limited to the ones I managed to see throughout the year. Some of the films I’ve written about during 2025. In my short introductions to each film, I’ve used parts of those longer presentations that you will find in the film section.

Last week the Iranian director Jafar Panahi was handed a one-year prison sentence, and a travel ban in Iran. He was at that moment in New York to receive prizes for his latest film It Was Just an Accident. He commented that he planned to return. Twice before he has spent time in prison. It was conversations with other political prisoners, telling him about violence and brutality in the prisons of the regime, that inspired him to shoot this film.

The French director François Ozon is a prolific filmmaker, who since his feature debut film Sitcom from 1988 has delivered one new film after another, almost one every year. And you can never be sure what topic or in which genre he will deal with in his next film. The ones I have liked most so far have been Frantz from 2016, Everything Went Fine from 2021 and Swimming Pool from 2003. Now I add another one to this shortlist: When Fall Is Coming from 2023.

Having followed the career of the Norwegian director Joachim Trier since his debut feature film Reprise from 2007, I was excited to get the opportunity last week to see his latest film Sentimental Value. This film had its debut at Cannes in May this year, receiving a 19-minutes standing ovation. And it is truly a masterpiece! With his 2022 film The Worst Person in the World Trier got his breakthrough as an international filmmaker, but with Sentimental Value he writes himself into film history. There were moments in the film that reminded me of Bergman and/or Fellini.

When I started to become serious with my film watching after 2007, Mike Leigh was one of the directors who caught my early attention. The first one of Leigh’s films I watched was Secrets andLies (1996), soon followed by films like Naked (1993), Topsy-Turvy (1999), All or Nothing (2002) and Vera Drake (2004), as well as his earlier TV-work like Abigail’s Party (1977) and Meantime (1983). It opened the whole genre of British social realism for me. Since then, if only possible, I will not miss a new film by directors like Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Andrea Arnold, Lynn Ramsey and Clio Barnard.

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s English-language debut film, winner of the Venice Golden Lion 2024, is a heartfelt, meditative, crafty work of a filmmaker who keeps developing with age.The issues he brings up  belong to his phase of life, which can make it hard to feel the depth of those emotions when you’re twenty years younger or so. Mortality, regret, memory, loss of curiosity and pleasure which comes with older age are the issues he tackles in this film.

De Seta’s films were often praised for their poetic and visual quality. They show the beauty and simplicity of everyday life in scenes of swordfish fishing, sulfur mining, mending of nets and boats, farming and shepherding. In his short 11 minute documentaries he shows the craft of manual labor, the beauty of the sea and countryside, the communal spirit and bonds, laying out the regional culture of the early Fifties in southern Italy. In a later interview he mentioned that he at the time was not aware that that way of life would disappear within a few years.

Lately I have become more and more captivated by the work of the Irish co-directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawler. They started their film-making under the production title Desperate Optimists in 2004 with a number of short films leading to Joy in 2008. Joy is a 9 minutes film about a girl who has gone missing after a farewell from her friends in the local park. Their next production was their debut feature film Helen (2008) about a classmate of Joy who is asked to play the Joy part in a police-organized reconstruction. Seeing this film Helen and their next one Mister John (2013) with similar themes made me fascinated by their unique approach to filmmaking and to their original, somewhat mysterious, grasp of identity themes.

Maybe the most exquisite film I saw at the Gothenburg Film Festival. It has stayed with me, in my heart and mind, just for its stunning emotional force. I find myself longing to see it again, also because there is so much detail from faces and events to take in. The film transports us into another time and place in a quiet and powerful manner with magnificent landscapes and great, natural acting.

Films from more than 80 countries were shown at this year’s film festival in my hometown Gothenburg. This year’s theme was defiance, the power of civil resistance. Filmmakers have taken risks sharing their story with us. They feel they need to do so in defense of their humanity and dignity. They believe in the potential of film to change how people feel and think.

I still owe you my list of the best films of the past year. It contains the films that I truly care about and continue to carry with me. The ones that I believe will stay relevant, because they open up important reflections and discussions in line with our Nexus key ideas. Of course this list is limited to the ones I managed to see throughout the year. Some of the films I’ve written about during 2024. I’ve used parts of those longer presentations that you will find in the film section.

It is always helpful to see films like The Sacrifice in company. Because this film is not an easy watch with its long clips, its symbolism and its length. It needs more than two eyes and ears to decode its poetic images and its contemplative monologues and dialogues. Shortly after the finishing of this film project in 1986, Tarkovsky died of brain cancer in a Paris hospital at the age of 54. Problems with the Soviet system and its film censorship caused him not to return to Russia after the making of his film Nostalghia in Italy in 1984. He shot The Sacrifice on the Swedish island of Faro, where Ingmar Bergman lived and made many of his films. Tarkovsky used a Swedish crew and Swedish actors. He admired Bergman and the themes and cinematography in this film remind of Bergman’s work.

Green Border by the Polish director Agnieszka Holland was awarded with the Special Jury Prize at the 2023 Venice Filmfestival. I had to wait till last week to watch this movie at our local cinema, where the film had its premiere in Sweden. It was made into a special occasion with a video-recorded introduction by the director and with a panel conversation after the movie.The film has been presented as the most compelling film of the year. It deals with the refugee crisis in Europe. The green border refers to the passage in the vast, virtually impenetrable forests at the Polish-Belorussian border, a green corridor cynically created in the autumn of 2021 by the Belorussian dictator Alexander Lukasjenko. Refugees from the Middle East and Africa were attracted to that piece of barbed-wired border through propaganda promising them an easy passage into the EU.

”The man who seeks vengeance is like a fly banging into a window failing to see that the door is wide open.” This old Armenian proverb comes on the screen at the end of the 2008 film Lady Jane from the French director Robert Guédiguian. Guédiguian is of Armenian descent on his father’s side, but is born and has grown up in Marseille. He still lives in Marseille where he shot many of his films, among them Marius and Jeanette (1997), The Town is Quiet (2000), the already mentioned Lady Jane and Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad (2015).

Stéphane Brizé is the French counterpart of Brit Ken Loach. After The Measure of a Man (2015) and At War (2018) he completed his trilogy of films on the subject of the working-class with Another World (2021). In the first two films the angle is from the worker’s side who is pressured by company decisions and demands. In Another World the issue is presented from the side of the plant manager, Philippe, who is running a factory as part of an international conglomerate of companies. The film does not start at the working place but at a lawyer’s office with a difficult divorce arrangement meeting with his wife and her lawyer. She expresses the neglect she has felt, expressing that in the past two years Philippe only had six weekends away from office, and when he was at home he always took his work along.

The global refugee crisis is giving rise to a large number of stories that need to be told and to be listened to. The displacement of people because of war, conflict or drought has reached an all time high. The pressures this brings on people in receiving countries feeling that this endangers their own peace and prosperity, givIng more and more rise to reactionary responses. All the more important to listen carefully to the stories of desperation and struggle people go through in their forced attempts to find places of safety and peace that most of us are so used to.

Here are a few other films that I watched and found highly fascinating at the 2024 Gothenburg Film Festival. They have caught my attention and I continue to remember and care for the stories told in these films. Each one of them drew me in and added something to my understanding of life, of what is meaningful and precious in life.

One of the 2024 Academy Awards nominees in the category International Feature Films is Perfect Days nominated by Japan. The director is Wim Wenders, a German veteran director with an impressive list of films and documentaries on his merit list. In 2020 Wenders was invited to make a documentary about the Tokyo city initiative to make its public toilets stylish. Instead he decided to make a feature film in which these stylish toilets play a central role. It became Perfect Days, the story about the life of Hirayama, a quiet, unassuming middle-aged toilet cleaner, presenting him seemingly as the embodiment of contentment.

Once again a week of cineastic delight and inspiration to reflect has come to an end! Our local film festival this year offered 240 films from 82 countries. It is amazing to have access to this kind of advanced storytelling and to be able to share that experience in the company of friends to digest impressions and thoughts with! In a number of articles I want to share with you the films I particularly responded to and of which I feel that they contain much Nexus related content and inspiration. I hope that it may inspire you to take the occasion to watch these movies when these films come your way.

Once again I offer you my list of the best films of the past year. This time I felt it was unusually easy to collect ten films that I particularly cared about. Even to the degree that I needed a shared 9th and 10th place! Of course this list is limited to the ones I managed to see through the year. I am very aware that I have missed important films, but I trust that this list, if needed, will be supplemented through the comments offered by the readers.

Monster by the Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda is among the best films you can see this year. I am always eagerly anticipating Koreeda’s next film ever since I saw his 1998 film After Life (which according to me is still his best one). With films like Nobody Knows (2004), I Wish (2011), Like Father Like Son (2013), Our Little Sister (2015) and Shoplifters (2018) he has established himself as the number one family portrayer of contemporary life.

Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama. The film starts with introducing us to the little family which is soon to be struck by a tragedy. Sandra Voyter, a successful novelist and translator, is interviewed in their French Alps chalet by a graduate student. Their 10 year old son Daniel, blind since an accident at age 4, goes out for a walk with his dog. Sandra’s husband, Samuel, is fixing up the chalet, hammering and sawing at the top floor, with very loud music on. The interview becomes impossible through the noise, Sandra ends it and goes to bed to take a nap. Daniel, coming back after the walk, discovers his father dead lying on the snow with a severe wound at his head. Soon the investigation is on: did Samuel fall from the top window, did he jump or was he pushed by his wife?