The New Country
(Det nya landet)
With Mike Almayehu, Michalis Koustogiannakis, Lia Boysen.
Sweden, 2000, 35mm, color, 137 min.
Swedish with English subtitles.
Originally produced as a miniseries for Swedish television, the theatrical version of this delightful road movie has played to critical acclaim at the Berlin and New Directors/New Films festivals. Two recent immigrants to Sweden—a teenaged Somalian boy who remains rosily enthusiastic about his adopted land despite horrific memories of the violence he has escaped and a dour, middle-aged Iranian, a political refugee who harbors less sanguine views about the new society he has entered—meet in an asylum camp and fear they may be deported. Deciding to escape in a rusty old car, the unlikely pair takes their chances in the Swedish countryside, meeting up along the way with a former "Miss Sweden," now fallen on rough times. The trio of outcasts encounters the good, the bad, and the ugly (and often the hilarious) of Swedish society along their journey, ultimately coming to terms with poignant issues of dislocation and identity in modern society.