Astrid is one of the most beautiful films of the year

The Danish Director Pernille Fischer Christensen has turned a Biopic about Astrid Lindgren. Cliché free you have not told Lindgren of the famous woman, but of the unknown girl, Astrid. The Film focuses on an experience from her late puberty: an unwanted pregnancy. the By David Steinitz

A girl with long braids sitting excited at the hairdresser's. Today, one could speak of Pippi Longstocking pigtails, but not in this Hairdresser because the girl will have to invent the chair Pippi until many years later.

Now panic flickers, first of all, in the eyes of the hairdresser. Should he really do it? Is this going to end in a tearful Drama? But the young customer orders: "Cut off!" Uncertain, the man lifts the scissors, looks for help to the customer on the neighboring chair. But the girl still commands: "Cut off!" And so SNiP, snap, fall the braids to the ground, and the seventeen-year-old Astrid feels a bit unsure, but also proud, by the new Bubifrisur.

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A hairstyle that was seen on the cover of a German fashion magazine from the wild of Berlin, which has managed, miraculously, to in the Swedish province of Vimmerby. "The modern woman" on the Cover, and even if the girl does not know yet what that means in concrete terms, can feel that she wants to be exactly that - a modern woman. What struggles did this mean in practice for twenty years, from the parental Potato field, the Church dance afternoons, and the little girls pigtails in a self-determined life, to overthrow, of the feature film "Astrid" tells about the young Astrid Lindgren, one of the most beautiful films of this year.

From the life of a writer, its exciting to Create with the Label of children's book author called completely inadequate, you could tell many of the stations in the movies. Their War diaries from 1939 to 1945, which appeared under the title of "humanity's lost his mind", could provide plenty of material. Also as it was in the men's club of the smoky literature operation of the post-war period to the best-selling author, is a story in itself. As well as her difficult marriage to an alcoholic, and her work for the Swedish secret service in the Department of letter censorship in the forty years.

The Danish Director Pernille Fischer Christensen didn't want to Lindgren, the famous woman, but of the unknown girl Astrid tell. And of the events with which this girl had fight in her youth, and made them the woman and the writer, as she was known all over the world.

Christensen, who is no longer part of the inventory of the European auteur film - for the love of the drama "En Soap" she won at the 2006 Berlin film festival Silver bear - wanted to go with "Astrid" away from the clichés. Way of the bullerby-romance of the old Lindgren-film adaptations, away from the image of to communicate in Swedish Übermutter, the Casinoslot embodiment of the old Astrid Lindgren until her death in 2002. Film biographies do it is always good if you focus on a phase of life, to distill the personality of a people, to raise rather than with the imaging of an entire lexicon entry. This Station is in the "Astrid" is an experience from your late puberty. Like its siblings, the Teenager Astrid, not very promising at the time, but Ericsson is to say, the parents after school on the farm to help the family of the Church has leased. The everyday life is determined by the field and the cattle, and of the Religion. On Sunday mornings, the family horse-drawn Carriage through the snow in the cold Church, sitting next to the other members of the community on the hard, wooden benches that give the smallest girl is an untoward creaking of giggle.

What is the future? From Astrid bursts out: freedom!

That Astrid is not made for country life, you need to see, if also with a sigh, the strict parents. In the school newspaper her daughter has written an essay with the title "life on our farm", and this Text has the first and only editor of the Ortszeitung Vimmerby Tidning in the hands. The man, Blomberg, Germany, is the personification of mid-life Crisis. He wants to be in the process of divorce and tried to take his life and his work (both in the same house) to get a grip on. Therefore, he is looking for an editorial help. So Blomberg (Henrik Rafaelsen) and asks for Astrid's parents for permission, and give in under the condition that Astrid helps retract after work during the haymaking and Wood.

For Blomberg it receives enthusiastic obituaries and wedding announcements, reads a correction and may write small reports on local station openings to a strange contraption called a typewriter. What most of the newspaper volunteers today, as a journalist, would feel of limbo, for the life-hungry girl from the Church in Vimmerby Paradise.

What this means for you the future asks Blomberg, of his hardworking assistant. From Astrid, it immediately bursts with shining eyes: freedom!

To this freedom for you also, that she sleeps with her boss. Astrid would like to get to know the life, and Blomberg who wants to forget his current life, fall in love. On her first erotic adventure Astrid Lindgren has spoken very late to the public. Because the affair ends for the girl's tragic. It is to the dismay of the parents pregnant by a still married, 30 years older man. That alone would have been in the rural Sweden of the twenty years, particularly for a family that gets their Land from the Church, for a society to completely crash enough. But Astrid decides not only to get the child, but to also waive, to the related father, she leaves to take your life into your own hands - the ultimate provocation.

The movie follows Astrid on her way to Stockholm, where she hides her growing belly in front of the blasphemous home community. From there, she travels to Copenhagen, where it is the only hospital in the floor of the conservative Scandinavia, in the women anonymous a child can bring, without the name of the father. After the birth of your son, Lasse, a Danish foster-mother, and a Secretary completed the Stockholm indoor training in order to earn money for their small family. The child she only sees every few months, because the Crossing is so expensive.

This separation, which takes place over three years, is the most difficult time of your life, as Lindgren later Protocol. And it is the origin of all the lonely boys in their books, in which she was able to empathize like no other, one of the bosses in "Mio, my Mio" up to Lillebror "Karlsson from the roof". But it is also, of course, is the origin for all the rebellious, tempestuous girl from Pippi Longstocking to Ronia, the robber's daughter, the not let get to you from the insanity of life.

Astrid is Played in the Film by the actress Alba August. The should have taken care of wrinkles in Lindgren's Swedish home for the forehead, because the 25-Year-old from Denmark originates. What was probably felt as if you had found for the German literature of the national hero, Goethe only an Austrian, to play him. But as Alba August, this is the role, with a curious hunger for life, as it can be only seventeen, you have really no doubt that she is the perfect cast. Your presentation of the Astrid Lindgren makes it to the big discovery of this year.

Unga Astrid, SWE/DNK/D 2018 - Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen. Book: Christensen, Kim Fupz Aakeson. Camera: Erik Molberg Hansen. With: Alba August, Trine Dyrholm. DCM, 123 minutes.