Sales manager Michael Werner said he has been interested in the project ever since he read the script two years ago. "I am so pleased to be representing it. It's a very powerful human drama that is deeply moving. The novel was translated into 25 languages and sold over four million copies worldwide. The film has a fantastic potential internationally."
Set between 1939 and 1952, the film is the gripping story of Simon who grows up in a loving working class family in Gothenburg. Intellectually gifted, he turns to an education normally reserved for young men of academic heritage, against his parents' will. There, he meets Isak, the son of a wealthy Jewish bookseller who has fled the German persecutions. The boys and their families' lives will interconnect in unexpected ways as war rages all over Europe.
In the lead role is Bill Skarsgård. The film directed by Lisa Ohlin has the talented cinematographer Dan Lausten (Robert and Bodil award-winner for Just Another Love Story) behind the camera. Christer Nilsson produced it for Göta Film, in co-production with Norway's Filmkameratene, Denmark's Asta Film, Holland's Flinck Film and Germany's Schmidtz Katze Filmkollektiv with support among others, from Nordisk Film & TV Fond. The Swedish premiere via Nordisk Film is scheduled for December 9, 2011.
NonStop Sales also added two new titles to its Cannes line up: the Dutch thriller Loft, a local box office hit, with a US version in the making, and the Italian/Russian co-production The Bright Side of the Moon by Massimo Guglielmi. Since Berlin, the company part of Turner Broadcasting has sold the Norwegian youth movie Liverpool Goalie to Benelux for DVD and television and the Swedish WW2 drama Beyond Border by Richard Holm to the UK, France and Japan.
In a separate statement, NonStop Television announced that they had signed a major deal with Warner Bros International Television (WBITD) to give Scandinavian viewers of NonStop's Showtime and TNT7 access to 50 feature films and TV series from WBITD.