Everlasting Moments

Sweden near Malmö at the start of the twentieth century. Maria Larsson is a working woman with seven children; her husband Sigfrid drinks and is violent. She goes to a shop to sell a camera she won in a lottery years earlier. Sebastian, who owns the shop, teaches her to use it instead of buying it. Jan Troell directs. Maria Heiskanen plays Maria, Mikael Persbrandt plays Sigfrid. The story is real. Maria Larsson existed and comes from the family of Troell's wife; the narrative rests on what her granddaughter recounted. Some of the photographs in the film are Maria Larsson's own. Troell both directed and shot it, operating the camera himself. The image is deliberately aged, the colour close to the texture of period glass negatives, the light almost entirely natural. The subject is not art but permission. Maria's photography is not presented as a story of talent. It is about how hard it is for a poor married woman to possess anything of her own, and the camera is what that possession looks like. It was Sweden's Oscar submission and won across several categories at the Guldbagge awards. Who it is for: viewers who like Scandinavian period drama and the history of photography. Who it is not for: the domestic violence recurs throughout and the film promises no rescue anywhere, and the pace is very slow.