Lilja 4-ever

It is not often that everyone is quiet after a movie at the cinema. Some were crying, others did not know how to act, ending up staring out in to the emptiness. For me, nothing was the same after I did leave the cinema. I know that it sounds like a cliché, but I tell you, it is not. Some of these people were laughing before they sat down, but the haunting beginning of the movie did wake everyone up. Every day you do wake up, when you are working you do hurry away; maybe you take your children with you to leave them at the nearby kindergarten. If it is a holiday, maybe you are of to meet some friends. In the evening you come home, you are cooking and eating. Maybe you do sit down with your wife and kids watching a good TV-show. When the night comes, you are wishing your child's a good night's sleep before you go to bed. It is not easy for you to know what is going on inside the apartment of your neighbour. The time that pass from the beginning to the end is the time the director Lukas Moodysson have to convince you that the reality is not as good as you may think, or maybe you already know, all to well.

The reality of leading character Lilja becomes slowly a part of your reality. You can choose to see Lilja in two different points of view. You can see her as a part of a fairly tale, and nothing more, than her life story will disappear after the movie in your shower. Or you may see her as she is; a picture of what life can do with people who are not as lucky as you, a picture of other girls in the same situation as she. The great acting of the 15 year old Russian actress Oksana Akinsjina makes it possible. I did almost forget that she is not Lilja when I did see the movie, it is heartbreaking when she is crying, and when she is happy her smile is the most wonderful you have seen that day. But a few minutes later you may see pain in her eyes. If you are thinking about what is happing in the movie, you will understand her reactions. When it is painful then she cries without hope, when it is too painful she doesn't seems to react at all (exactly like you!) and you don't need to imagine to feel the pain she have inside.

The one that will become more close to her than anyone else is the street kid and male leading character Volodja act by the 12 year old Artiom Bogutjarskij (his first movie). I have worked with street children and his acting is very authentic. When everything falls apart for Lilja, Volodja becomes her last hope, he is never leaving her in her mind he is always close. He is the one who is always there, the one that catches her when she falls. Lukas said in an interview that Volodja are a shape of Jesus in the end you will understand. These parts are telling about the dreams of Lilja, whom makes it easier to understand her vision of hope. Lukas is the best Swedish director now and maybe of all time. The integrity of his actors is intact, that he manages to do it in a movie like this shows how good as a director he is. He has a moving respect for Oksana and the way he cares about her integrity is the thing that makes this movie worth looking. His manuscript is trustworthy and don't have any illogical lacks. Nothing is darker than it could be in the reality. All characters are three dimensional and even the evil characters are human, even the victims are not just victims.

You may wonder if the reality is this dark. In a article in a Swedish newspaper Lukas Moodyson told that he had spoken with a social worker and he was told that some mothers do sell their own kids for 1 £ to the sex industry. Though the movie is fictional and not about her, many of the memorable things that are happening to Lilja in the movie did happen to Dangoule Rasalaite from Latvia between the 17th September 1999 and the 10th January 2000. Lukas read about her in an article. The reality is always worse than the fiction.

The young actors do carry the weight of the movie with grace. Their acting against each other is moving, it is a special chemistry between them. Lukas has the gift of finding the right persons for the characters in all is movies, and Lilja 4-ever is not an exception. Last Monday Lilja forever won 5 out of 6 gold beagles (the most important Swedish film award) it was nominated to (Artiom was also nominated for best performance by an actor). The awards it won were for best movie, best picture, best manuscript, best direction, and the most important of them all, best performance by an actress. Trafficking is the third biggest illegal industry in the world; it makes this movie so important. Lukas Moodysson and Oksana did manage to wake up this nation, to show that our reality is not as good as we thought. We can see it in the reactions of the cinema public, how people are talking about it afterwards, and in the newspapers. The Swedish government are working for the possibility to show this movie in schools all over the former Sovjet Union. Lukas has said that if this movie can convince one girl to make other decisions than Lilja and to many other young girls; this movie was worth making.

This movie is worth more than all the awards it has won and all the awards it will win. This movie can change your point of view, it is that message of hope it brings.

/Josef Lundström

Director Lukas Moodysson has achieved a film that is so moving that it is hard to forget it after leaving the theater. Images come back into one's mind about this story about this girl. The tragedy of her life is something to be shocked and alarmed.

To think there are out there, in the so-called civilized world, people that take advantage of girls like Lilja is mind boggling. Lilja's mother has to be one of the worst monsters ever presented in a film. This woman abandons her 16 year old daughter because she has found a meal ticket with a man that will probably end up leaving her as well.

Lilja is beautifully portrayed by Oksana Akinshina. The actress and her character disappear in front of your eyes. The story is very true as thousands of naive girls are exported from what it was the old Soviet Union to other countries in order to force them into prostitution. This story is constantly in the news, yet more and more young girls are duped into going abroad with the promise of highly paid jobs that exist only for the people who exploit them.

Her only friend is Volodya, also a very sad boy who is thrown out of his own house by an abusive father. Volodya and Lilja form a bond as they cling to one another. The little boy is street wise; he knows the fate that awaits Lilja in Sweden. Their friendship is the only thing they both have.

The sad part of the film is the realization that so called "normal" and perfectly "respectful" people are the same ones that brutalize these children. They use Lilja to satisfy their sexual appetites, then discard her like yesterday's trash. To know that there are people like that in our society is a very sad commentary about our world.

Contrary to what many people have commented about the film, I thought that in spite of the tragedy of Lilja's and Volodya's lives, it had a very positive ending because both are free to run around in a better place together, which is not a luxury most of us have on our time in this planet.

Mr. Moodysson gives us a film that will shock; he dares to go where others wouldn't. A job well done..

When "Lilya 4-ever" premiered in Sweden 15 years ago, it shattered many hearts and gave fire to a debate on human trafficking that would last for years. I finally watched Moodysson's amazing film and it broke my heart too.

Twitter: @7thArtShortRevs (Mårten Larsson).

In the former Soviet Union, 16-year old Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) lives with her mother and new boyfriend, and is excitedly awaiting a relocation to the United States. It turns out her mother doesn't want her there, and takes off with the promise of Lilya following later, leaving Lilya alone in her apartment. Her aunt then throws her out, giving her the run-down flat of a recently deceased old man, and Lilya finds herself without any money, and only the young Volodya (Artyom Bogucharskiy) as a friend. Desperate, she discovers how easy it is to make money from whoring herself out, and then meets the handsome Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov), who invites her to live with him in Sweden. Despite Volodya's warnings, she decides to take his offer, but it soon becomes apparent that there is more to his Andrei's promises.

Based on a true story of a young girl who was trafficked to Sweden only to find herself imprisoned and forced to have sex for money, director Lukas Moodysson's film is set mostly in a very grim reality. Similar both to the social realism of Ken Loach, and the relentless and uncomfortable degrading of it's lead female character that is so prominent in Lars von Trier's films, Moodysson film is certainly brutal. As Lilya (played with a tragic naivety by Akinshina) is being abused in Sweden, we are treated to a POV montage of the various perverts and abusers, sweating and breathing into the camera. We live through the whole thing through the eyes of Lilya, a character of almost operatic tragedy, who suffers for the sins of others in a country ravaged by poverty, glue-sniffing and boredom.

But Moodysson wisely doesn't keep everything grim. In the final third, as Lilya suffers the most, the film often turns dream-like and fairy- tale. He introduces angels and dream sequences, as Lilya finds herself drifting through existence in an almost coma-like state, with her dreams and fantasies her only relief. These scenes (and there are only a few) are not flashy or whimsical, but are subtle and simplistic, in a similar way that Wim Wenders portrayed his angels in Wings of Desire (1987). It's a powerful tool that makes Lilya's plight all the more profound. The film plays out almost like a cruel fairy-tale, only set very much in the real world. Lilya 4-Ever is a hard film to sit through, but is rich in humanity, even though most of its characters are certainly devoid of it.

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The movie is extremely sad & hard to watch, cause of its unbelievably realistic picture of poverty, humiliation & depression in which the vast majority of people in the former USSR republics live, including here in Russia. The minority of those who have still managed to keep being human beings in this mess is surrounded & slowly devastated by demoralised animals, created by the decades of communist reign. The realism of the picture is overwhelming & scary. It is so unexpected that a Swedish director have managed to see all the sadness, corruption, violence & immorality of post-USSR space much more clearly than any Russian director ever will. Probably, it is because most people here in Russia see the hell which is going on around them as a normal thing. That's why we need movies such as this - to face the truth, we are so trying to escape in everyday life. Plus, the film exposes the problem of human traffic in such true-to-life manner, it is painful. Worth watching for former USSR citizens, in order to wake-up & realize how degenerate they're becoming. Worth watching for foreigners in order to understand how the 99% of people in Russia & other post-soviet countries live, outside the glamorous & fake facades of Moscow city.