Johan Kling

Johan Kling (born August 7, 1962 in Stockholm ; actually Carl-David Johan Kling ) is a Swedish film director , screenwriter and television producer .

biography

Johan Kling was born as Carl-David Johan Kling in Stockholm in 1962 and began his career as a musician. In 1980 he and his friend Mauro Scocco founded the rock band Ratata , which one year later achieved success with the summer hit Ett + Ett . After separating and dropping out of political science , history and philosophy , Kling began to gain a foothold as a career changer in Swedish television, where he specialized in comedy and reality TV formats . Among other things, he produced the well-known panel show Knesset in the mid-1990s , which was broadcast on the Swedish television channel ZTV . He also directed and wrote the screenplay for the series Stockholmare (2001), which focused on the network of relationships and professional careers of young Swedish capitals, which was followed by other low-budget formats.

In 2003, Kling made his first short film with Jag , which was inspired by a conversation between two young girls on the subject of shopping . In the 28-minute production he staged the amateur actress Michelle Meadows as the self-loving higher daughter Eva. Four years later, after great efforts, Kling got his leading actress in front of the camera for the title role in his debut feature film Darling . In the elegant and black-humored capital of the capital, Meadows slipped again into the role of the style-conscious and arrogant Eva, who is endured by her boyfriend and mother and who works out of boredom. After cheating on her partner and losing her mother's financial help, she has to swap life in expensive restaurants and nightclubs for a job at McDonald’s , where she meets a much older divorced, recently unemployed engineer (played by Michael Segerström ) .

Darling premiered in February 2007 at the Gothenburg Film Festival , where Kling was immediately awarded the main prize. The production then became a great success with critics and audiences, which in Sweden was understood as a kind of generation film of the 21st century and at the same time compared to Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary . A year later, Darling was the favorite with six nominations at the 2008 Guldbagge Awards, Sweden's most important film award. While leading actor Michael Segerström won the award, Darling surprisingly had to admit defeat to Roy Andersson's tragic comedy The Youngest Thunderstorm in the important categories of film, direction and screenplay . There was international critical acclaim from the American trade journal Variety , which emphasized the elegance of the film, the performance of its leading actress and the "smooth direction" . The star showed the film on the at the premiere Hamburg Film Festival 2007 Kling's "trenchant views on the shoals of human behavior" towards which he has in his television series Stockholmare had proved.

After the success of his first film, Kling is preparing his second feature film Trust Me in 2009 , again a comedy about a theater director. The Swede is primarily inspired by literary works in his work and counts Anton Chekhov and Gustave Flaubert among his favorite authors. He is also enthusiastic about the way Stanley Kubrick works and counts Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal among his favorite films. In 2007, on the occasion of the 60th birthday of the Cannes Film Festival, Variety listed it as one of the 60 “Faces for the festival future” alongside the German filmmaker Fatih Akın and the Iranian debut director Marjane Satrapi . In 2010 the feature film Puss was made around several women who run an amateur theater in Stockholm. With the romantic comedy about Alexander Skarsgård , Gustaf Skarsgård , Michelle Meadows and Michael Segerström, Kling was unable to build on the great success of his previous film. In 2011, Gustaf Skarsgård made his script Människor helt utan betydelse as a short film.

Johan Kling lives with his partner and their six-year-old son in Kungsholmen .

Filmography (selection)

• 2001: Stockholmare (TV series)
• 2002: Spacer (TV series)
• 2003: Jag (short film)
• 2007: Darling
• 2010: Puss

Awards

• 2007: Nordic Film Award for Darling
• 2008: Greta (Swedish Film Critics' Award) for Darling
• 2008: Guldbagge nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Darling

Web links

• Johan Kling in theInternet Movie Database(English)
• Wennö, Nicholas: Intervju med Johan Kling at dn.se, January 26, 2007 (Swedish)
• Johan Kling är Filmsveriges nya darling Johan Kling at hallandsposten.se, October 27, 2007 (Swedish)
• Interview at lovefilm.se, February 9, 2007 (Swedish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} cf. Wennö, Nicholas: Intervju med Johan Kling at dn.se, January 26, 2007 (accessed on July 26, 2008)
2. ↑ ^{a b c} cf. Johan Kling är Filmsveriges nya darling Johan Kling  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   at hallandsposten.se, October 27, 2007 (accessed on July 27, 2008)
3. ↑ cf. Wennö, Nicholas: Svensk films nya kelgris at dn.se, March 13, 2007 (accessed July 25, 2008)
4. ↑ cf. True, Holger; Behrens, Volker: Robber Hats and Propaganda Tales . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , October 1, 2007, edition 229/2007, p. 9
5. ↑ cf. Rehlin, Gunnar: Darling . In: Variety , 12. – 18. February 2007, p. 46
6. ↑ cf. Reklam finansierar kvalitetsfilm at svd.se, September 6, 2007 (accessed on July 27, 2008)
7. ↑ cf. Faces for the festival future ( Memento of the original from April 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at variety.com, May 9, 2007 (accessed July 27, 2008)