The life of Astrid Lindgren becomes film

Sweden's national icon Astrid Lindgren is about to become film, directed by a Dane  

  • Astrid Lindgren in her home, around 1960, courtesy of Wikimedia/Commons. Her Stockholm apartment is opening as a museum on what would have been her 108th birthday, Nov. 14, 2015.

  • The life of Astrid becomes film
    Sweden's national icon Astrid Lindgren is about to become film, directed by a Dane. Director Pernille Fischer Christensen’s film, titled “Astrid," will focus on Lindgren’s decisive younger years. Thus the production company Nordisk Film will be first in the world with a feature movie about the superstar of children’s literature. But it took a Dane to hatch such a brilliant idea.
    “As a child I received my spiritual nourishment from Astrid Lindgren,” Pernille Fischer Christensen explains. “Like all Danish kids I’ve read and adored her stories.” Now she wants to make a huge, epic and psychological film about Astrid Lindgren before she became a celebrated author. “Astrid” will show Lindgren’s harmonious childhood in Näs in Småland and give glimpses into the aged author living in Vasastan, forced to attend her son’s funeral. But first and foremost the film will focus on Lindgren’s youth, when she became pregnant and was “forced to flee” Sweden in order to give birth to her son, Lasse, at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen. “What intrigues me is trying to find out where her enormous power comes from. How can a person write such sensitive, loving, and intelligent stories about childhood? What sort of environment did she grow up in? Where does all that power of love come from?” The film is so far only in the developmental stage, but if all goes according to plans, filming will start in the fall of 2014, the same time as Astrid Lindgren replaces Selma Lagerlöf on the 20 kronor bill. Producer Lars G. Lindström calls it “a dream project,” and today the project is being presented in Cannes in the hopes that financiers will respond. Lindström expects a great international interest since Astrid Lindgren has sold approximately 145 million books in 95 countries.

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