NonStop Entertainment picks up 20 Int’l titles - co-produces film by Aniara creators

The English-language film currently filming on the island of Gotland in Sweden is the sophomore feature by Swedish writing and directing duo Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja (Aniara).

The stellar Nordic and international cast includes Tyler Labine (New Amsterdam, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Ella Rae Rappaport (Lost in Space, Limboland), Arvin Kanaian (Triangle of Sadness, Aniara), Gina Diwari, Andrew Lowery (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Milan Dragisic (Sleep, Eat, Die).

Kågerman is producing with Nina Lund for the company You Saved Me, in co-production with NonStop Entertainment, Film Stockholm, the Gotland Film Fund, Film i Dalarla and support from the Swedish Film Institute.

Partly based on Kågerman's work for Vice Magazine and the novel Die Gelehrtenrepublik by Arno Schmidt, the satirical coming-of-age sci-fi turns on a young Swedish club kid who is assigned to report from the forbidden zone for one of the world's hippest magazines, at a time when the Cold War never ended and Soviet Kazakhstan was hit by a nuclear bomb.

Rappaport commented: “It’s incredibly fun to step into this world Pella and Hugo have built, which is wacky but also very realistic. I’ve never been part of something with such complex characters that have so much darkness but also humour.”

The major Nordic indie group NonStop Entertainment headed by Jakob Abrahamsson has also just announced a slew of 20 international titles acquired for the Nordics and the Baltics in the past few months.

Among the high-profile films set to premiere in the Nordics are the Cannes Director’s Fortnight’s In Flames, the restored version of Man Ray’s Return to Reason, with a soundtrack composed by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logen’s group Sqürl, the Berlinale films Ingeborg Bachmann-Journey Into the Desert by Margarethe von Trotta, and Blackberry by Matt Johnson.

In a separate Cannes announcement, Abrahamson unveiled he will produce with Patrick Andersson - his partner in the specialised genre-oriented Mylla Films - the survival period drama Devastation directed by Mikael Marcimain (Blackwater, Horizon Line). Nordic group Scanbox will co-produce and handle distribution in the Nordics.​