ÄLSKVÄRD
2026 · 13m · Sweden
Directed by Louise Hedenvind
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A lonely teenage girl is torn between love, responsibility, and self-preservation as her conspiracy-obsessed father is consumed by his own version of reality.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The conspiracy-obsessed father could've been easy satire, but Hedenvind refuses the takedown—she just watches him vanish into his own logic while his daughter drowns in the space he leaves. It's a gutsy refusal to pick a side.
A formally precise portrait of intergenerational fracture, positioned in the lineage of intimate Nordic character studies; the restraint in how Hedenvind holds the daughter's face while her father spirals suggests a director deeply conversant with Dreyer and the ethics of close observation.
The film hinges entirely on a single sustained choice—shooting the father mostly off-screen or in profile, forcing us into the daughter's perspective of estrangement—and that formal decision transforms what could be a familiar teen-parent drama into something achingly specific about invisibility.