In its latest bet on bold Scandi features, Copenhagen-based sales and aggregation house LevelK has picked up world rights to the Swedish feature “Live a Little” (“Leva lite”) which received a rapturous response at its world premiere in Göteborg last weekend, where it scooped the SEK 50,000 ($4,500) Angelo award from the Church of Sweden for best new Swedish cinema release.
The pic is also a runner up for the festival’s hefty SEK 400,000 ($36,000) Dragon Prize-Best Nordic Film to be handed out Feb 1.
The youth-oriented feature, about the grey zones of consent and the difficulty to set boundaries, marks the feature debut of Fanny Ovesen, nominated for a Crystal Bear in Berlin for her short film “She-Pack.” Seasoned producer Marie Kjellson, credited for Ruben Östlund’s “Force Majeure,” produces for Kjellson & Wik.
The story follows two young Swedish girls, Laura and her best friend Alex, as they head off to a fun couch surfing trip across Europe. But after one wild party in their first stop-over in Warsaw, Laura wakes up naked, having had sex with a stranger. Unable to remember what really happened, she sets off on a whole new journey to explore her own body and boundaries. As flashbacks from that night keep popping up, she starts having doubts. Was sex that night in Warsaw consensual or not?
“Live a Little” is refreshing,” said Tine Klint, founder and CEO of Levelk about her latest pick up. “It tells a powerful and intimate story about navigating uncertainty and finding yourself; it’s bold, honest, and full of heart!”
Ovesen said the starting point for the feature was a similar traumatic incident that a friend of hers endured.
“What happened to my friend was that she woke up naked beside a guy, as we were out couch surfing. She had a complete blackout, and found it much easier to view herself as someone who’d made a stupid mistake and was unfaithful to her boyfriend, rather than identifying as a rape victim. It was this identity crisis that I wanted to explore on screen,” said the director, who was also keen to bring to the forefront “something larger.”
“It’s about being young and trying to navigate relationships and intimacy, about how difficult it is to set boundaries and to be authentic, not only in non-consensual situations, but also in consensual ones.”
An important element and thread throughout the creative process was to view the story from the female gaze, Ovesen explained.
Rather than simply switching the male gaze “to a woman’s objectifying perspective on men,” she strived to get close emotionally to the characters, both visually, with the support from her cinematographer Mattias Pollak (“Explosions of the Heart”), and in the character-building, including in the depiction of Laura’s boyfriend and the guy she spends the night during her blackout. “I wanted young men in the audience to be able to identify with them, hoping that it might lead to some important soul-searching,” she said.
Despite the tough – but pressing – subject matter, Ovesen said tone-wise, her intention was to create “a vibrant, thrilling and funny road-movie in an exotic universe, the couch surfing community which is full of amazing people.”
To bring a multi-cultural vibe and authenticity feel, the young director cast non-professionals with different backgrounds, next to Embla Ingelman-Sundberg (Netflix’s “Carousel”) in the lead, Aviva Wrede (“Hashtag”) as her best friend and French rising star Oscar Lesage (“The Substance,” “Marie-Antoinette”) as the antagonist.
Ovesen told Variety she hopes her film will both ‘trigger the audience’s senses” and “lead to good conversations” about boundaries and the grey zones of consent.
“Live a Little” was co-produced by Renée Hansen Mlodyszewski of Norway’s True Content Production, Monica Hellström of Denmark’s Ström Pictures and Film i Väst. Executive producers are Kim Magnusson of Scandinavian Film Distribution and Thomas Robsahm of Amarcord. Co-financiers included the Swedish Film Institute, Eurimages, the Norwegian Film Institute, the Danish Film Institute, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Czech Film Fund production incentives, Creative Europe Media, Lindholmen Science Park and Yle. Leading arthouse specialist TriArt handles the domestic release.
LevelK’s Göteborg slate also takes in the festival’s Nordic Lights entries “Way Home” by Charlotte Sieling and “Sudden Outbursts of Emotion”by Paula Korva.
