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Original name: Paradiset Brinner
English name: Paradise
Year: 2023
Run time: 118 Min
Language: Swedish
Type (Colour/ Black & white): Colour
Country: Denmark, Finland, Italy, Sweden
Director: Mika Gustafson
Producers: Nima Yousefi
Cast: Bianca Delbravo, Dilvin Asaad, Safira Mossberg, Ida Engvoll, Mitja Siren, Marta Oldenburg, Andrea Edwards
Screenplay: Mika Gustafson, Alexander Öhrstrand
Cinematographer: Sine Vadstrup Brooker
Editor: Anders Skov
Music Composer: Giorgio Giampà
Production Company: Hobab, Intramovies, Toolbox, Tuffi Films
World Sales: Intramovies
Mika Gustafson was born in 1988 in Linköping, Sweden. She holds a Bachelor's degree in film directing from Valand Academy, Gothenburg. In her short films, she proposes hazy tales of youth, in which reality and fiction are confused by way of partially scripted stories, montage, and handheld camerawork, as the director throws herself with absolute immediacy into the medium. Her first feature film was the documentary Silvana (2017), about the Swedish rapper Silvana Imam, which earned her the Swedish Golden Guldbagge for Best Documentary.
Her first feature-length fiction film, Paradise is Burning (2023), was awarded the Orizzonti Award for Best Director at the Venice FF.
In a working-class area of Sweden, sisters Laura (16), Mira (12) and Steffi (7), get by on their own, left to their own devices by an absent mother. With summer on the way and no parents around, life is wild and carefree, vivacious and anarchic. But when social services call a meeting, Laura has to find someone to impersonate their mom, or the girls will be taken into foster care and separated. Laura keeps the threat a secret, so as not to worry her younger sisters. But as the moment of truth draws closer, new tensions arise, forcing the three sisters to negotiate the fine line between the euphoria of total freedom and the harsh realities of growing up.
