Ridge

A mesmerising Scandi experience, this award-winning blend of documentary and drama recalls Carlos Reygadas and Andrei Tarkovsky.

First-time director John Skoog turns the camera on the small village of 2000 people where he was born in Sweden’s south. Local residents including Skoog’s own brother mingle with actors in this enigmatic and bewitching hybrid where farmers, tourists, migrant workers and modern machinery help tell the story of his peaceful town over one Swedish summer. Drinking rituals, broken hearts, man’s imprint on the planet and all of the moments of natural beauty and hardship that come in between are lovingly represented in this slow-burn feature that had the CPH:DOX jury that awarded it the festival’s top prize saying “[if] Tarkovsky had played video games and was a Swedish farmer, this might be what his films would have looked like.”

Filled with captivating tracking shots and stunning camerawork often filmed at the twilight hour of fading evening sun, Ridge was also awarded the Best Cinematography prize at the Göteborg Film Festival. It is a transfixing and unique cinematic curiosity from Plattform Produktion (the people behind MIFF 2017’s The Square and MIFF 2014’s Force Majeure).

“A hybrid film about the cosmic interconnectedness of all things, and a living document of life in rural Sweden, Ridge is a film deeply rooted in its surroundings … Skoog’s playful, anarchic spirit and taste for the absurd only adds to the film’s mystical atmosphere, suggesting there’s more to these images than meets the eye.” – Kinoscope