27th Göteborg Film Festival
January 23rd-February 2nd, 2004

The 27th Göteborg film festival ran between January 23 and February 2. It is Swedens biggest filmfestival, showing around 700 titles from all over the world. The Swedish Church participates with quite a large program - in the seminar part of the festival called Cinemix and with a huge U2-mass in Annedalskyrkan. For the third time the church also gave a film prize to one of the film in the nordic competition - that is, the same films that are nominated for the "big" jury. The competition contains eight films from Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland - both documentaries and fictions. Seven male directors and one female presented a variety of different styles and subjects and the jury had quite a hard time choosing a winner.

The jury consisted of Anne-Louise Eriksson, Sweden, Sofia Sjoe, Finland and Ylva Liljeholm, Sweden.

The Swedish Church Film Prize, endowed with 30.000.- Swedish Crowns, was given to the film

Fyra nyanser av brunt (Four Shades of Brown)
by Tomas Alfredson, Sweden/Denmark 2004

The jury´s motivation is as follows:

A skillfully made quilt where every patch is soaked in human shortcomings. Overstepping the national context of the film, the different stories point out the consequences of lacking communication and fear of community. The film leaves no one unaffected and awakens a yearning for life to be more than this. And in its absence the Gospel can still be sensed as a constantly present possibility.

It is a more than 3 hour long film about the relationship between parents and children, and about the darker corners of modern western lifestyle. The film is made by a comedy-group named Killing-gänget - known mostly for comedy series on TV. This film is something completely different, a dark fairy-tale which is closer to Todd Solondz' Happiness more than anything else the Killing-gang ever did before.

"Four Shades of Brown puts modern Sweden and human shortcomings under a magnifying glass. Black humour, quirky behaviour and dysfunctional families to educate and entertain in a full-length work, told grippingly and filmed on an epic scale.
Four Shades of Brown is the first feature film by Swedish comedy group Killinggänget. A kaleidoscopic magnification of human - Swedish - behaviour and mores, it tells four different stories. A well-dressed man, having just completed his life's work, meets his destiny, in the shape of a little man made out of wood. In the south of Sweden a zealous father tries to encourage his son, by showing him the joys of small animal cremation. In Gothenburg, a diverse group of people convene, in the belief that they will learn how to cook. And somewhere in the north, a patriarch dies. His sons attend the funeral, which manifests strong oriental influences. Sliced in half for a classic intermission, Four Shades of Brown is epic in design and the almost Hopper-like visuals. Swooping down from an opening bird's eye view of the suburban sprawl, its opening ironic gesture, Four Shades of Brown delves deeper in the quirky but often dark view of urban and suburban lives, dysfunctional relationships and bizarre families. The film is tinged with moments of the blackest humour, but also of deep anger and frustration. Its protagonists may sometimes be absurd, nearly cartoonesque and laughable in their actions but finally are treated with great sympathy in an atmosphere heightened by the hyper-real visuals." (Festival information Rotterdam)