Armbryterskan från Ensamheten

A slow pace documentary that will intrigue the viewer. Heidi (the arm wrestler) has an appearance far from what one imagines. At first sight it is hard to comprehend the fact that she is a world champion arm wrestler. She is more of the nurse/teacher type of person.

As the movie goes by her life is made understandable to the viewer. The scenery around her village is very beautiful and peaceful, a true place for meditation. At some stage in most peoples life i believe all would like to spend some time in the village Solitude.

One must not be of Nordic or even western descent to enjoy this documentary. This film was awarded "Best Documentary" at the 10th Pyongyang (North Korean) film festival.

If you are hesitating in the video store rent this one, you will not be disappointed.

Armbrytaran från Ensomheten is an awarded Swedish documentary about a small village and its young world champion in arm wrestling.

Heidi Anderson is the name of the 22 years old girl who is world champion in arm wrestling, in this documentary you will get a view about how she lives in this very small and strange village called Ensamheten (in English solitude), it is a village that contains 16 citizen, and they are all relatives. We also follows her to the world championship in Canada.

It's a fascinating documentary, and it has a really good father daughter portrait. It's also very interesting too see how all those relatives work together in this small and isolated village.

If you have a chance too see it, give it a try.

Quite a thought provoking documentary about the Swedish female world arm wrestling champion and her life.

Certain parts were boring (OK, she lives in a small village called Solitude where all inhabitants are family, we get it!) while others where very fascinating (most of all the world championship itself).

I think the documentary would have been much better had it focused on the championship.

Some more points: * What was going on in the competition? Some more details (number of participants, rounds etc) would have been interesting. I find the sport of Arm Wrestling much like Sumo from a spectator's viewpoint (short, intense matches), although Sumo competitions are much better filmed. * How did Heidi's father and the other fellow (Torbjörn? Who was he? Her brother? her cousin?) do in the competition? The filmmaker build up rapport with these two, but we only see her father losing one game.

Finally, I was reminded about the main character of a Swedish fantasy novel - Svärdsspel i Hadarlon (www.neogames.se/svardsspel). Heidi Anderson could get that role any day, she even looks like Ryana, who in the book struggle a lot to win a championship, just like Heidi.