Kasper & Sophie
2022 · 13m · Sweden
Directed by Tomas Jonsgården
Genres: coming-of-age, crime, drama, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tender, tense
A guilt-ridden teenage boy spends a late afternoon making desperate phone calls to his girlfriend as the full story of his complicity in a crime of passion — based on a real Stockholm murder — emerges gradually through overheard conversations. The film builds toward an irreversible act, implicating the viewer in the protagonist’s unraveling.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Three invisibly-spliced shots posing as one unbroken take, dragging the viewer through a real-life murder confession. Cute trick, but 'implicating the viewer' is the most overused sentence in the festival pamphlet — I'll bite anyway because Swedes actually commit to the dread.
Three invisibly spliced shots staged as a single take, in service of a real Stockholm crime — this is Sebastián Lelio's discipline meeting Gus Van Sant's Elephant, and the Vimeo comments confirm the suffocation lands. A strong formal argument for compressed duration.
Three shots invisibly spliced into one apparent take across 12:40 — that's a serious technical feat in service of complicity, trapping you in the kid's guilt rather than showing off. Real Stockholm murder source material gives the restraint somewhere to land.
Reviews
A quietly provocative story about betrayal that raises the question of how far one is willing to go for love — so immersive it feels incriminating.
A simple but powerful coming-of-age story made all the more hard-hitting for the fact that it’s based on a real crime of passion that took place in Stockholm.
Festivals
- Indie Short Fest 2022, Best Thriller Short, Best Director
- Vancouver Independent Film Festival 2022, Best International Short