When Viaplay’s expansion and original’s production collapsed in 2023-2024, competitors acquired Nordic noir series but passed over dramas exploring war experiences and relationship breakdowns. This article examines this selection as indicative of different commissioning approaches. A case study of young adult television suggests that key competitor Netflix’s genre-driven, universalizing approach contrasts with Viaplay’s creator-driven emphasis on social authenticity. Drawing on textual analysis, business reporting and creator statements, the article suggests that Viaplay’s ‘Nordic way’ - personal experience as starting point, everyday realism as aesthetic - offered something distinct that was commercially unsustainable yet culturally significant in the Swedish streaming landscape.

This editorial introduces the issue of Journal of Scandinavian Cinema (JSCA), which focuses on representations of various social identities in diverse historical and cultural contexts. The issue includes articles on race and post-colonialism, gender and sexuality, and class and nation in Nordic films. The editorial summarizes main arguments and contributions of each article and highlights the relevance and importance of studying cinematic representation in the Nordic countries.

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This article analyses the three recent Nordic Noir television series Bordertown (Sorjonen) from Finland, Trapped (Ofaero), from Iceland, and the Danish-Swedish The Bridge (Broen/Bron). All series are located on national borderlands, and this article aims to discern the significance of using such borderland settings. Departing from Doreen Massey's emphasis on places as being inherently inter-linked with other places, the article characterises the various ways foreign influences are represented and narrativised in these three series.

This article explores the similarities between the two most successful Swedish films of the past years. Through a focus on the two elderly protagonists the article discusses how the films acknowledge challenges in these men’s lives and in both contemporary and past society, but effectively repackage any serious issue in a form that remains palatable to audiences in Sweden and internationally. Themes discussed include the Swedish welfare state, community and new families of choice, as well as aspects of globalization.

“Stories with Queer Identities” analyzes representations of queer characters in Bier’s films Like It Never Was Before (Pensionat Oskar, 1995), Once in a Lifetime (Livet är en schlager, 2000), and Love Is All You Need (Den skaldede frisør, 2012), and in her television series The Night Manager (2016). Anders Marklund argues that Bier’s career shift from ‘modest-sized Swedish productions to larger international ones’ parallels a movement away from nuance and toward broad stereotyping in her work’s approach to queer characters. He connects this shift to each film’s specific context and intended audience, linking, for instance, Like It Never Was Before to Sweden’s gay rights movement in the 1990s and considering The Night Manager’s Corky according to the series’ function as mainstream, heteronormative entertainment. Marklund concludes that Bier’s more recent and ‘elegant transnational productions’ re-marginalize queer characters in a manner reminiscent of earlier problematic film stereotypes.

In this article I argue that On Suffocation relies on paratexts in order to articulate what I take to be its most important message. I foreground a few of these paratexts, especially Facebook postings and a festival Q&A session, in order to illustrate the ways in which they contribute to the film's meaning.

Dark memories in the provincial words of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and Federico Fellini's AmarcordThis article about Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973) and Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) concerns one aspect of the directors’ childhood memories, namely how authoritarian institutions are used to disrupt otherwise fairly idyllic and nostalgic lives and worlds. The films blend detailed memories with playful fantasies, combine experiences of the directors’ alter egos, Titta and Alexander, with rituals of family and larger communities in the provincial cities of Rimini and Uppsala. In each film, bitter memories are given a central role. This article explores the similarities of these bitter memories, as they are imagined in the mature auteurs’ last exceptionally successful films.

ABSTRACT This article analyses three recent and very successful Scandinavian films - Niels Arden Oplev’s Män som hatar kvinnor/The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo (Sweden), Susanne Bier’s Hævnen/In a Better World (Denmark) and Sara Johnsen’s Upperdog (Norway) - in order to understand how the relationship between the national and the international is articulated. Focus is on the scenes taking place abroad and on the functions that these scenes fill within the films’ overall story and thematic concerns. One conclusion is that scenes set abroad allow the films to divert attention away from otherwise harsh representations of national communities. A brief concluding discussion suggests that such a use of the scenes may facilitate the films’ transnational distribution.

This article analyses Natan against the background of an increasingly mobile world where social relations and practices have become disembedded and social capital decreases. Natan outlines an inability to feel at home in modern society, and counters this experience by restoring a nostalgic home for a seemingly homeless man.

A discussion on Suzanne Osten's film Broderna Mozart, as a non-typical Swedish film of its period.

A study of foreign places present in Swedish feature films during the period 1980-2010, asking what functions foreign settings (and cultures, identities etc) serve within stories belonging to different genres.

A brief analysis of the American poster to the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, relating to genre, audiences and distribution.