In his luggage are Lost in Perfection, his new documentary questioning the Scandinavian vision of perfection, and The Acali Experiment by award-winning Marcus Lindeen (The Regretters).
Driven by a determination to remain autonomous and to make films outside of the tradition Swedish film system, Gandini has immediately felt close to Fasad’s fertile ground for highly individual filmmaking, from Ganslandt’s Falkenberg Farewell, The Ape, Blondie, to Axel Petersen’s Avalon. “It’s the ultimate place for me right now. Kurlandsky and Ganslandt have a very interesting background with fiction and independent filmmaking with an attitude that is similar to my vision for documentary filmmaking,” says the Italian born Swedish director.
After his vitriolic look at Berlusconi’s universe in his multi-awarded 2009 film Videocracy, Gandini is turning to Scandinavian vision of a perfect society made of totally autonomous individuals. “When this concept was created in the early 1970s by a group of Swedish politicians, it was a fantastic idea. But at the same time, this autonomy can be quite destructive and it actually hides a great loneliness”, says the director who cites a report according to which Sweden is the loneliest region in the world, with the highest amount of people dying alone and single households. “The film will look at what’s behind the façade of perfection and it will question the definition of perfection and happiness” adds Gandini.
Currently in production, Lost in Perfection is produced by Juan Pablo Libossart for Fasad in co-production with Indie Film in Norway and Zentropa in Denmark, with co-financing from SVT, YLE, DR, NRK, support from the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian film institutes and Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Delivery date is set for the end of 2014.
Gandini is producing in parallel Marcus Lindeen’s hybrid documentary The Acali Experiment, pitched at Nordisk Panorama and CPHDOX 2013. The project focuses on an experiment on a group of 11 men and women who embarked in the summer of 1973 on a 101 day long sea adventure on a raft drifting across the Atlantic. The ‘Acali expedition’ was initiated by anthropologist Santiago Genovés who wanted to explore the origins of violence and the dynamics of sexual attraction. Lindeen’s intention is to gather the former participants in the Acali experiment and to recreate their confined environment. The film will go into production in 2014.
Other projects in Fasad’s pipeline are the next Jesper Ganslandt film to be co-produced by Anna Anthony’s Memfis Film, the hybrid documentary Aeterna directed by Fredrik Wenzel and Jesper Kurlandsky, a film by Agnieszka Lukasiak (Between Two Fires) and Angela Bravo’s documentary An Imaginary Country.