Biography

Daniel Fridell is an internationally acclaimed film director, producer, author, and screenwriter whose work has been showcased at prestigious festivals including Toronto, SXSW, Montreal, Tokyo, Telluride, Mar del Plata, Busan, and many others. He has received numerous accolades, such as several Best Film awards, the HBO Prize, the Nordisk Film Prize, and multiple Swedish film awards.

Fridell directed the Scandinavian box office sensation The Searchers (1993). The film reached the number one position in theaters across Scandinavia. Building on this momentum, Fridell directed Cry, which also topped the Scandinavian box office. Cry competed at the Tokyo International Film Festival and won several awards, including Best Youth Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival. In the early 1990s, Fridell deepened his craft at the European Film Academy in Berlin, studying under filmmakers such as Wim Wenders and Jan de Bont. He later worked with Bont on Twister, while also attending the Judith Weston Academy for Directors and Actors in Santa Monica.

Fridell's career includes a string of critically acclaimed and commercially successful films. Under the Surface (1997) achieved significant success in Scandinavia, France, the U.S., and beyond. His film Dubbel-8 (2000) was an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival. In the mid-2000s, Fridell wrote and directed two back-to-back hits: Bloodbrothers (2005), starring Noomi Rapace and Sofia Helin, and Say That You Love Me (2006), both of which were box office successes and earned several awards, including Best Actress honors.

As a producer, Fridell delivered Robbers for Universal Nordic, starring Sofia Helin and Mikael Persbrandt, and Exit (2006) for Paramount Nordic, featuring Mads Mikkelsen and Alexander Skarsgård. He also produced the Japanese horror film Apartment 1303 (2007), based on Kei Oishi's novel Ju-on, and later co-directed the American remake Apartment 1303 3D (2011) starring Mischa Barton. In 2011, he directed the acclaimed theatrical documentary El Medico: The Cubaton Story, which won Best Documentary at the New York International Latino Film Festival and received the HBO Prize. The film was invited to numerous top-tier festivals worldwide.

Fridell has also directed and produced several successful television projects. These include the 2014 SVT drama Daddy's Girl, the C More original True Crime series Svartenbrandt (2019), the SVT documentaries Blackout (2021) and Versace (2021), the Congo-based theatrical documentary Panzi Hospital (2021), and the TV series 100 Percent (2021), Domen (2022), and Flying Souls (2023-24).

His novels Sökarna, 30th of November, and Svartenbrandt have all been adapted into films or TV series. His biography One Word for Blood, 2023 about Somali poet Faysa Idle, has been optioned for film and will premiere as a stage production at the Norwegian National Theatre in 2025. His crime novel series The Witch 2025 is currently in development as a TV series, and his upcoming works - the biographies Gängledarens arv 2025 and Queen of Trash, 2026 as well as the crime series Gangster Anonymous 2024 - have already been sold to several countries.

- IMDb mini biography by: Thomas Olsson