Three young sisters are abandoned by their irresponsible mother and seeking total freedom for ever in Venice Film Festival’s Paradise is Burning (Paradiset brinner), which swept the Best Director Award of Orizzonti.
The fiction feature debut of Swedish director Mika Gustafson (who co-driected the exhilarating and deeply intimate music documentary Silvana following Swedish rap artist Silvana Imam, in 2017) somehow has the right time to be unveiled, which had its world premiere in the Orizzonti strand at the 80th Venice Film Festival, with stories of adolescence and coming-of-age films dominated its lineup, Paradise is Burning takes the spotlight. The film, which I could say that it would be fit in Berlinale Generation and is on Sweden’s shortlist for the 2024 Oscar Ceremony, revolves around three sisters aged 7 to 16, who get by on their own after their mother vanishes for whole swathes of time. Bianca Delbravo plays the eldest Laura, who’s in charge of taking care of her younger siblings and will do anything for them, including breaking into fights to defend the girls, Mira (12, Dilvin Asaad, shines the most in this film) who just got hit puberty, and the youngest-tomboyish Steffi (Safira Mossberg).
It’s summer in Sweden and the girls have all the freedom to play; breaking into someone’s house and stealing food supplies at the supermarket, but when social services call a meeting, Laura worries that they will be taken into foster care and separated. She plans to find a stand-in for their mother and then she accidentally meets a stranger Hanna (Ida Engvoll) who might be just the right fit.
Kids taking the roles seriously at the festival circuit this year starting at Sundance where Rosa Marchant (younger Eva in When it Melts) won a World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Performance and later the Silver Bear landed to its youngest recipient in history, Sofia Otero (10) for leading Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s debut feature 20.000 Species of Bees. The performances are spectacular too in Gustafson’s film, all three members of the main cast are stellar, and their breathtaking naturalism is saturated with entertaining, charming, and energetic delivers. While the title is quite provocative, the movie doesn’t treat its premise of adolescent anxiety despairing and miserable off the leash, Gustafson’s take on the kids is much more than a reductionist vision about the extreme susceptibility of children in the absence of their parents, sure there are moments of chaos but mostly there’s a full spectrum of emotions of what it is to be growing up. Paradise is Burning manages to take a seen-before storyline and turn it into something playful, intimate, and sweet. Mika Gustafson is successful at directing children here.
Originally titled Sisters, the film is a co-production between Sweden (HOBAB), Denmark (Toolbox Film), Finland (Tuffi Films), and Italy (Intramovies). The latter also serves its world sales.
