Best Swedish drama movies

A celebrity model couple are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged, alcoholic captain. What first appears Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island in a struggle of hierarchy.

When Oskar, a sensitive, bullied 12-year-old boy, meets his new neighbor, the mysterious and moody Eli, they strike up a friendship. Initially reserved with each other, Oskar and Eli slowly form a close bond, but it soon becomes apparent that she is no ordinary young girl.

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.

Despite being deposed as president of his condominium association, grumpy 59-year-old Ove continues to watch over his neighbourhood with an iron fist. When pregnant Parvaneh and her family move into the terraced house opposite Ove and she accidentally back into Ove’s mailbox, it sets off a series of unexpected changes in his life.

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.

A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.

While holidaying in the French Alps, a Swedish family deals with acts of cowardliness as an avalanche breaks out.

19 year old Linnéa leaves her small town in Sweden and heads for Los Angeles with the aim of becoming the world's next big porn star, but the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined.

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

After living a long and colorful life, Allan Karlsson finds himself stuck in a nursing home. On his 100th birthday, he leaps out a window and begins an unexpected journey.

When a border guard with a sixth sense for identifying smugglers encounters the first person she cannot prove is guilty, she is forced to confront terrifying revelations about herself and humankind.

In a struggling post-Soviet community, Lilya a teenage girl is abandoned when her mother moves to the United States with her boyfriend. Facing neglect and poverty, she meets Andrei, who offers her a job in Sweden, giving her hope for a better life — and a journey that will change everything.

Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin.

As the Swedish town of Kiruna sinks, Frigga finds herself torn between her family and her job as security chief at the world's largest underground mine.

As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

Stockholm, in the 1950s. Erik is expelled from the local school for getting into one brawl too many. To protect Erik from his violent stepfather’s reaction to his expulsion, Erik's mother arranges for Erik to spend a year at Stjärnsberg Boarding School, the only school willing to accept him. This is Erik's last chance to graduate to Upper School and he promises his mother, for his and her sake, to do all he can to stay out of trouble.

A jaded mother makes a last-ditch effort to keep her family together by taking them on a trip to their teenage daughter’s pole dancing competition.

Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.

Arn, the son of a high-ranking Swedish nobleman is educated in a monastery and sent to the Holy Land as a knight templar to do penance for a forbidden love.

An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.

Two Swedish/Norwegian half sisters go on a winter diving trip in Northern Norway, when they get trapped after a rockslide.

Karin hopes to recover from her recent stay at a mental hospital by spending the summer at her family's cottage on a tiny island. Her husband, Martin, cares for her but is frustrated by her physical withdrawal. Her younger brother, Minus, is confused by Karin's vulnerability and his own budding sexuality. Their father, David, cannot overcome his haughty remoteness. Beset by visions, Karin descends further into madness.

While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.

A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.

An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.

Johan and Marianne are married and seem to have it all. Their happiness, however, is a façade for a troubled relationship, which becomes even rockier when Johan admits that he's having an affair. Before long, the spouses separate and move towards finalizing their divorce, but they make attempts at reconciling. Even as they pursue other relationships, Johan and Marianne realize that they have a significant bond, but also many issues that hinder that connection.

A boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.

One summer day, two teens begin a reckless affair and abandon their families to be with one another.

Sweden faces a mysterious attack while Alex tries to reunite with his youth love, Anna.

Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.

After they meet at their parent's engagement party, Mia and Frida are intrigued by and attracted to one another, despite Mia's own upcoming engagement to Tim. Mia must decide whether to continue her life with Tim or to follow her heart with Frida.

Ronia lives happily in her father's castle until she comes across a new playmate, Birk, in the nearby dark forest. The two explore the wilderness, braving dangerous Witchbirds and Rump-Gnomes. But when their families find out Birk and Ronia have been playing together, they forbid them to see each other again. Indeed, their fathers are competing robber chieftains and bitter enemies. Now the two spunky children must try to tear down the barriers that have kept their families apart for so long.

Göran and Sven have been cleared for adoption and they have a possibility to adopt a swedish orphan, Patrik 1,5. But when Patrik arrives he turns out to be someone else, not the little boy they were expecting. A comma had been misplaced, and in comes a 15-year-old homophobic with a criminal past.

JW is serving hard time in prison and struggling to get back on an honest path. There are glimmers of hope in his life – some venture capitalists are interested in a new piece of trading software he's developed, and while behind bars he's made peace with an old enemy. This all proves to be an illusion. On leave from prison, and back in contact with his former gang, JW learns that once you've walked in the shoes of a criminal there just may be no going back.

Woman, 38, no children no husband! Lisa wants a change of life. She starts internetdating, but it turns out that the more men she meets, the further from family happiness she finds herself. An absurdly realistic journey through the bright nights of the big city filled with friendship, love, sex and selfbetrayal!

After a young woman and her parents are murdered by a killer determined to wipe out the entire family, Detective Inspector Joona Linna works with a psychiatrist to hypnotize the son who narrowly escaped death in order to find the one surviving daughter before the murderer does.

A young woman struggles to defend her Sámi heritage in a world where xenophobia is on the rise, climate change is threatening reindeer herding, and young people choose suicide in the face of collective desperation.

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

A true and captivating story about the biggest legal scandal in Swedish history, the story about the reporter who questioned an entire legal system. Hannes Råstam was dedicated to proving the innocence of Thomas Quick and unmask the legal chaos which sentenced Quick to a life in psychiatric prison.

Carl Hamilton manages to infiltrate an international gang that has stolen advanced Swedish GPS-guided missiles. But the league is subjected to a sudden deadly attack by a well drilled group of mercenaries of unknown clients. Hamilton escapes the massacre, but the rockets have disappeared without a trace.

Simon has Asperger's syndrome and doesn't like changes in his life. He lives with his big brother Sam and Sam's girlfriend Frida. When Frida can't stand having to adapt to Simon's peculiarities anymore she takes off, leaving Simon with having to find a new, perfect, girlfriend for his brother.

Stig is a 15-year-old pupil of 37-year-old teacher Viola. He is attracted by her beauty and maturity while she is drawn to him by his youth and innocence, a relief from her drunk and miserable husband.

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breeding Sami girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930s and phrenological examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.

JW now lives in exile and is more than ever determined to find out what happened to his missing sister Camilla. Every trace leads him to the world of organized crime in Stockholm. Jorge is about to do his last score – the largest robbery in Swedish history. But during the complicated preparations he meets a woman from his past – Nadja. Martin Hägerström is chosen to go undercover into the Serbian mafia, in order to get its notorious boss Radovan Krajnic behind bars. When an assassination attempt is made on Radovan, his daughter Natalie is pulled into the power struggle within the Serbian mafia.

A Stockholm couple plans to get married on the gorgeous island of Gotland, where family-imposed traditions turn their most important day into a disaster.

A teenager struggles to pick up the pieces of her shattered world in this emotional and bittersweet coming-of-age drama about those who are left behind.

A traveling magician and his assistants are persecuted by authorities in 19th century Sweden. Their capture, however, didn't bring victory to those in power.

Ambitious overachiever Hanna just needs one more kid before her life is perfect. Instead, her baby daddy unexpectedly dumps her. Suddenly, she finds herself without a place to live, job or family. With every fiber of her being set for victory, Hanna refuses to give up and decides to win him back. But to get there means having to win something much more important, love and desire for herself and who she is.

Roro, a foreign worker in Swedish parks, loves his girlfriend but is about to marry another girl to prevent her from being sent back to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Roro's best friend, Måns, has serious problems getting an erection.

In a desperate bid to reunite with his daughter, an armed man bursts into the medical center where his estranged wife works and kidnaps her.

Elisabeth and John John are raised in the same city, yet they live light years apart, separated economically, socially and culturally. That is until the day they start in the same high school class.

A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.

The puppy love of two teenagers is set against a backdrop of adults struggling with their own lives. As a couple in love, they don't care about anything but themselves and seem totally unaware about everything that surrounds them.

In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008. The thieves used an elaborate scheme called the 'little brother number' or 'brother trick', involving advanced role-play and gang rhetoric rather than physical violence.

Karl and Kristina Nilsson work on a farm in a cold and desolate area of 19th century rural Sweden. Growing privations, combined with increasing social and religious persecution, motivate the Nilssons and many of their neighbors to strike out for the United States. Following a treacherous ocean crossing and an equally grueling land passage, the emigrants find themselves in seemingly idyllic Minnesota.

Stockholm, late 1970s. Within a stone’s throw of government buildings and juvenile homes lies the seductive world of sex clubs, discotheques and private residences. Call Girl tells the story of how young Iris is recruited from the bottom of society into a ruthless world where power can get you anything.

A madly-in-love young couple's relationship begins to suffer when they struggle to conceive a child.

Swedish intelligence officer Carl Hamilton's 7-year-old goddaughter Nathalie is kidnapped. When the kidnapping's underlying motive becomes known, the Swedish authorities assume a passive role, forcing Hamilton to action. With the help of international contacts, Hamilton manages to get them on track. Hamilton, along with some military colleagues, plans a daring rescue mission.

On her 40th birthday, Amelia makes a fateful wish to be 18 again back in 2002 but soon regrets it when she's stuck reliving the day over and over again.

During a brief summer vacation, a lonely woman recalls her first love thirteen years earlier.

The story of Dylan Pettersson, a 23-year-old girl from a small island in the Swedish archipelago with big dancing aspirations.

An otherworldly evil is slipping into a small town in Sweden. Six unrelated girls have been chosen to fight this evil. Together they must overcome their differences in order to save themselves and the world.

In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.

A number of complicated relationships develop between a circus ringmaster, his estranged wife and his lover.