The Swedish Film Institute has announced the nominees for its 2007 Golden Beetle (Guldbagge) awards.
All three best film nominees are their respective directors' feature-film debuts:
Farväl Falkenberg / Falkenberg Farewell (above) is Jesper Ganslandt's touching — and more than little disturbing — coming-of-age comedy-drama. Shot in semi-documentary style, Falkenberg Farewell follows five childhood friends in the small beach town of Falkenberg, where they do drugs, fool around, and eventually come face to face with the reality of death.
Catti Edfeldt's and Ylva Gustavsson's Förortsungar / Kidz in da Hood tells the story of an undocumented immigrant who, after the death of her grandfather, finds a foster parent in the figure of a tattooed, pierced musician. As the surrogate father, Gustaf Skarsgård, Stellan Skarsgård's son, was nominated in the best actor category.
Set in Stockholm, Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein's Storm (above) is a sci-fi thriller about a young man (Eric Ericson) whose life is turned upside down after he meets a mysterious woman (Eva Röse).
Pedro Almodóvar's Volver, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others were the three best foreign films nominees.
The Golden Beetle ceremony will be held on Monday, January22, at Cirkus in Stockholm. The statuette itself, in the form of a beetle, was designed by Karl Axel Pehrson.