EUFF 2023: Comedy Queen

Sweden | Sanna Lenken | 2022 | 94 min

In Swedish with English subtitles

A 13-year-old girl sets her sights on comedy glory in gifted Swedish director Sanna Lenken’s family crowd-pleaser, winner of Best Film in the Berlinale’s 2022 Generation Kplus section. Still processing the suicide of her mother, young Sasha (Sigrid Johnson) develops a survival plan to prevent a similar fate from befalling her: no books, no long hair, no caring for living things—no resembling her mom and the life she couldn’t cope with. The next item on Sasha’s checklist is to make her father, overwhelmed by grief, laugh again. The solution: limber up those funny bones and hit the stand-up stage!

“Based on an acclaimed children’s book by psychologist and author Jenny Jägerfeld, Lenken’s screen adaptation expertly treads the fine line between the spunky and the brittle, at times managing to combine the two to gripping effect” (Jan Lumholdt, Cineuropa).

“Sanna Lenken once again demonstrates a sensitive feeling for the emotional life of her protagonist and allows grief and anger to be transformed by real humour, and an old earworm.”

Berlin IFF