NOR26 Raven's End

A period film that trades nostalgia for an unflinching look at working-class hardship, Bo Widerberg's sophomore feature is set in 1936 in his native Malmö. In the impoverished neighbourhood of Raven's End, a young dreamer named Anders (played by Widerberg's frequent collaborator Tommy Berggren) pursues his ambitions as a writer while growing ever more suffocated by the crushing weight of a bleak world closing in around him, beneath poverty, family dysfunction, and the creeping shadow of war on the horizon. A shot of raw, kitchen-sink energy straight into the veins of Swedish cinema, Raven's End offers a merciless portrait of youthful hope colliding with the grinding weight of economic despair.