The Emigrants

In the 1850s a poor farming family in Sweden decides to go to America. There is not enough land, the harvest fails and the children go hungry. The journey is long and dangerous: first to the port, then weeks at sea, then inland on a continent they know nothing about. Kristina does not want to go, but staying does not pay either. Erik Poppe directed the film from Vilhelm Moberg's novel, and it became the second screen adaptation of it; the first was Jan Troell's, made in 1971 and nominated for an Academy Award. This time it is Kristina rather than her husband Karl Oskar at the centre of the telling. Lisa Carlehed plays Kristina and Gustaf Skarsgård plays Karl Oskar. The hundred and forty eight minutes make the exhaustion of the journey directly felt.