"In the film industry,

I have no doubt that people

can become experts in their field

by just working and not going through

any education"

What led you to become a film director? Was it your life ambition from childhood or something or somebody inspired you and you went for that?

My parents had a small video camera at home to film our holidays and our dogs and those kinds of things. When I was in my teens I started borrowing it more and more often. I would film myself and my friends when we were skateboarding and eventually we started doing small, really simple sketches and shortfilms. Eventually in school, I started making films as school projects as well and taught myself some editing with the schools computer. I was never interested in anything in school, except when there was a possibility for me to do some kind of video project. So as soon as I graduated high school, I was already very interested in learning more about filmmaking and I never looked back from there.

Do you have any film education or you are self made man who went his own way and learnt the trade as he walked?

Straight after high school, I did an 8 week filmmaking workshop and with the film I did there together with some action sports videos I had done, I applied for a two year long film school which I attended. After that, I worked as an assistant in many different departments in film, as well as I got some work doing information films and different sorts of video campaigns. I was never really that interested in that sort of filmmaking, since I knew early on that fictional film was were my main interest was, but it was great for me to still do my own projects at the side from being an assistent and even though the things I did were not fictional, I still developed stronger basics of story telling during this time. In my spare time, I would make short films and very low budget music videos.

How are young, independant film makers financed in Sweden, do you have any state support and you can ask for grants at ministry of culture or you have to rely on sponsors and bank loans?

You can apply for developement money from the Swedish Film Institute and from different regional film commissions, to give you some time to develop a particular script or project. But to get that money, you need a certain project in the first hand that appeals to someone working there. Most people develope these projects on their spare time to a certain degree before applying for developement money to take the project further.

Is there any platform for indie film and filmmakers in Sweden?Any place or festival you would go and exchange experience, see other director´s movies and is there any distribution net or independamt films have to do it hard way via cinemas?

I believe there are some regional platforms to meet people, but I’m not quite sure how commonly used they are. At least I myself have not gone to something like that. But I do have some friends in the industry and we do read each others projects and give feedback, but it is not some regular event or anything, just us friends helping each other out. At film festivals you often meet other filmmakers and it is not uncommon that we watch each others films and talk a bit about our future projects. I think the whole industry is craving better ways to distribute our works outside of the cinemas, and there are indeed lot’s of new medias popping up all the time. Hopefully it will continue to grow and become easier for people to distribute there films and be able to watch other films that never made it to the cinema in their part of the world. It’s exciting times in that regard, but so far for us, we are still relying on cinemas, TV and DVD sales for the vast majority of the revenue from the film.

What feelings did you have when you started to make your first movie, excitement, fear, freedom?

It was both exciting and scary. If you screw up your debut film, there will be a long road of uphill in front of you for future projects. But being a film director is something I have worked hard to get to, so it was also very exciting and gratifying to actually get to the point were I was making something I have been wanting to do. So the positive side greatly outweighs the scary side of it.

If director as you, wins festival with his debut film,what feelings do you have, are you happy you went right way, satisfaction that you can do it or kind of fear that you may never repeat it again and you pushed your mark too high too soon?

I’ve spent a lot of time and hard work on Hemma, so of course I am very happy that some people seem to appreciate it. I personally feel that I have more to offer and things I can do better though, so I am not too worried that Hemma set the bar too high. Perhaps I will not win more awards and people won’t like what I do next, but at least I am very eager to continue to develope my work further.

Do you try to build around you a team of same people/actors, cameramen,decorators/ with who you would make other movies or you like to explore and find different people, different actors,different location every time?

It’s great when you find people that you enjoy working with and I will definetely work with some of the same crew and actors again. But each project is different and people have strenghts in certain areas, so I will also most likely work with some new crew members and actors depending on the project.

Do you think, to be able to make a film you have to have classical film education or you can just learn how to operate the camera, write a script and basicly do it all by yourself?

In the film industry, I have no doubt that people can become experts in their field by just working and not going through any education. But if you are lucky to find yourself amongst other enthusiastic students, it’s great to get a year or more to explore the arts in a school were you have both the time and the tools to try stuff out!

Will you try and capitalize on your Febio Fest victory to gain some publicity and more money for your next project or this will go unnoticed in Swedish press and means nothing for your film CV?

Hopefully it might draw some attention to the film and more people will be curious to see it, but I’m not sure what impact it will actually have. Hopefully it will also be able to make people a little less hesitant to trust me as a director in the future when I will be trying to finance my next film. But in any case, it’s great for everyone in the crew and cast to get some recognition for the hard work we put in!

In terms of viewers, how do you rate successfull movie in Sweden-100 000 viewers,500 000 viewers?May I ask you how much you roughly need to make film in Sweden?

It totally depends on what amount of distribution you are trying to get. A very small film only shown at few cinemas, obviously can be called successfull even if they only get a fractional amount of viewers compared to a film they are trying to push to a larger audience, so it’s really hard to say a specific number. Some people manage to do very interesting films for practically nothing, others manage to make a complete mess of huge budgets and vice versa also occurs, so it’s also a very dificult question to answer.