Directed by:
Babak NajafiScreenplay:
Babak NajafiCinematography:
Simon PramstenCast:
Sebastian Hiort af Ornäs, Eva Melander, Kenny Wåhlbrink, Miran Kamala, Martin Wallström, Sebastian Sporsén, Emil Kadeby, Adrian Ringman (more)Plots(1)
Sebbe is fifteen and a bit of an inventor. He and his single mother live in an apartment that is really too small for the pair of them and so it's inevitable that there's friction from time to time. Sebbe only has the vaguest memories of his father, but his mother Eva has a clear picture of him – for Sebbe looks exactly like his father and so her son is a constant reminder of her former boyfriend. But Sebbe's father is not completely lost: sometimes he appears to the boy in dreams and the two converse.
Sebbe's life is by no means easy. His mother often has to work nights and when she comes home tired in the morning she's often irritable. She's been known to fly off the handle – even sending objects flying out of the window! Things aren't much better at school where Sebbe is the victim of rough-house bullying. No wonder that the boy prefers his own company and enjoys wandering about the scrap yard where nobody tries to pull the wool over his eyes or tell him what to do. This is a place where he can find the most amazing bits of scrap metal and put them together to his heart's content. A place where he can really let off steam and – best of all – make things explode!
But, really, he didn't mean to make a bomb. It just sort of happened ...
(Berlinale)
Reviews (2)
A fan-captured social drama whose wheels fall off, especially when the director reaches for special effects, disrupting Simon Pramsten's magically close bonding of characters and magnificent camera. However, the image of the social environment of Gothenburg's dregs is painfully authentic and detailed, which only underlines the breathtaking performance of Sebastian Hiort af Ornäs, who has captured the unwanted creature incredibly aptly. Babak Najafi is undoubtedly a great talent, such a pure Nordic genre is an illustrative example of this. A strong ****.
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Once the movie description says it’s a drama and the country of origin is one of the five Scandinavian countries, you can be sure that whatever kind of drama this might be, it will punch you in the gut pretty much every time. Sebbe is the debut of the director Babak Najifi, who is definitely a pure-bred Swede with Iranian roots. And he managed to survive this depressing life just fine. Sebbe lives in a fucked-up family that only includes his mother. He’s involved in bullying, but he’s not stupid at all. But the world of children is a whole different thing, so you see pure desperation in his eyes about his life that keeps shooting depressing arrows at him from all parts of his life. The character of Sebastian was portrayed by Sebastian Hiort af Ornäs, and he did a terrific job of it. You could read all the sad things in his eyes. The ending was brutal and exaggerated, but it did what the director intended. I was wound up as a string.
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