Oscar nominated Swedish director in the US

Award-winning director Ruben Östlund will be at screenings of his latest movie 'Force Majeure' 

  • Ruben Östlund and Erik Hemmendorff (producer). Swedish writer-filmmaker Ruben Östlund is one of Sweden’s foremost young filmmakers. He began making ski films and was accepted to film school in Göteborg. His earlier films include The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008), the short film Incident by a Bank (2010) and Play (2011). Photo: Hanna Aqvilin

  • Award winning Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund will appear for a Q&A session at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland on January 15.
    Östlund’s latest work, “Force Majeure,” stands a good chance of being nominated for an Oscar, making the Best Foreign Language Film cut from 83 to nine in December. The five finalists will be announced live on Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 5:30 a.m. PT (8:30 EDST) in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film, which was won January 11 by the Russian film “Leviathan.”
    Östlund's film will be screened at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring at 7:15 p.m. on January 15.
    www.afi.com/silver The director will also be present for a screening this weekend in Minneapolis, at the Walker Art Center: The Films of Ruben Östlund

  • The Oscar, or Academy Award of Merit as is its true name, is 13.5 inches tall and weighs 8.5 pounds and has been handed out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and has done so since 1929. The statuette, which is made of gold-plated britannium on a black base, depicts a stylish Art Deco knight holding a crusader’s sword and standing on top of a reel of film with five spokes, the spokes each represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.

  • Our review of the movie: Swedes Make Waves at Toronto Film Festival

  • A second Oscars selection (2014) for Swedish director Ruben Östlund.

  • Östlund's earlier film "Involuntary" (De Ofrivilliga) was selected to compete at the 2010 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film but didn't reach the short list. To be among the selected five to compete can mean a lot for a director's future career. Only one Swedish director has won the award, Ingmar Bergman, who won three times.
    Oscar may be one of Sweden's most popular boys' names (it is) but of course Sweden has nothing to do with the award. It is actually unclear why the statuette and the Awards, officially the Academy Award of Merit, were given the name Oscar. Bette Davis claimed she named it after her first husband, others have voiced it may be a reference to the British playwright Oscar Wilde. ..the most popular story is that Academy librarian - and later executive director - Margaret Herrick (1902-1976) believed it looked a lot like her Uncle Oscar. After she made that observation, the Academy staff began calling the award 'Oscar.' The nickname wasn't used officially until 1939.

  • Ruben Östlund and Erik Hemmendorff (producer). Swedish writer-filmmaker Ruben Östlund is one of Sweden’s foremost young filmmakers. He began making ski films and was accepted to film school in Göteborg. His earlier films include The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008), the short film Incident by a Bank (2010) and Play (2011). Photo: Hanna Aqvilin