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Confrontational, provocative, outrageous, heartbreaking, hilarious – all can be applied to director Lukas Moodysson, who has been hailed internationally as one of Sweden’s greatest filmmaking talents, delighting and confounding audiences in equal measure. Drawing his inspiration from an eclectic and startling array of subjects, including commune living, teenage angst, punk rock, reality TV and graphic novels, Moodysson’s extraordinary filmography is keenly observed and deeply felt. Later this month, on the essential, alternative streaming service Arrow, you can see all of his films together for the first time (and the collection is released on a Limited Edition Blu-ray boxset on January 30th by Arrow Video). Here’s a look at each film and what to expect from this unique talent.

Show Me Love (Aka F*Cking Amal) (1998)

Moodysson’s multiple-award winning first film, Fucking Åmål (released overseas as Show Me Love), tells the story of awkward smalltown teenager Agnes and...

Our Nicholas Bell consider it among his top 5 best at Tiff this year and both Variety (will thrill to this sweet, spirited return to form) and THR (boards the rollercoaster of early adolescence with infectious results) come to the same consensus in Venice claiming that Together and Lilya 4-ever director Lukas Moodysson is back in great form and the Magnolia Pictures took notice (and so did 24 other territories who picked up the rights from TrustNordisk) – picking up the North American rights to the punk fueled coming-of-ager. Magnolia will release We Are The Best! in 2014.

Gist: VI ÄR BÄST! is about Bobo, Klara and Hedvig. Three 12-13-year-old girls who roam the streets. Who are brave and tough and strong and weak and confused and weird. Who have to take care of themselves way too early. Who heat fish fingers in the toaster when mom is at the pub. Who start...

We Are The Best!

Director/Writer: Lukas Moodysson

Producer(s): Memfis Film’s Lars Jönsson

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne in the main roles as Bobo, Klara and Hedvig with supporting cast includes: David Dencik, Johan Liljemark, Anna Rydgren and Mattias Wiberg.

We qualify 2013 as a definite “it” year for output of auteur-driven graphic novel adaptations and first on our countdown we find this Swedish item (expect a more fitting international title). Most recently known for his lesser items such as the experimental Container and existentialism inside a world romance in Mammoth, this adaptation, Moodysson’s 7th feature film could be considered a throwback, yet nifty counter-film when measured up against his more nihilistic beginnings in Fucking Åmål, Lilya 4-ever, and the fierce, A Hole in My Heart. If Moodysson manages to add a punk/alternative soundtrack, then this coming-of-ager should be sought out.

Here I am.  Where are you?  I love you.  I miss you.  

Lukas Moodysson woefully neglected (at least in North America) new film starring Michelle Williams, Gael Garcia Bernal and Marife Necesito (a wonderful Filipino actress who is the real heart and soul of the film) steps back from flirtations with pornographic explicitness (A Hole in My Heart) or the baffling bauble of Container and takes on the large task of trying to understand family bonds in the 21st century.  A film as timely as Up In The Air or the 2006 film it is inevitably compared to: Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (if only because of the world-hopping story and Gael Garcia Bernal who is, more or less, in the Brad Pitt role), it may be even better than either of those two because of its quiet (distant) empathic confusion.  While it eventually comes to a boil, for the most part,...

Sweden's Lukas Moodysson burst onto the international film scene with 1998's "Fucking Åmål" (or, as it was cowardly renamed in English-speaking countries, "Show Me Love"), a carefree, naturalistic drama about a reluctant romance between two small-town teenage girls. Just as ebullient is his 2000 period satire and popular favorite "Together," which focuses on the dysfunctional relationships and values of '70s left-wingers living in a commune, after which Moodysson began pursuing darker, moodier fare. 2002's critical darling "Lilya 4-ever" couldn't get much bleaker, tracing a Russian girl's journey from drop-out to prostitute to kidnapped sex slave. Following that were two avant-garde experiments: 2004's shockingly explicit take on amateur porn, "A Hole in My Heart," and his 2006 stream-of-consciousness curiosity, "Container."

Though American actress Jena Malone provided narration to that last film, Moodysson's new drama is also his first English-language production, mostly. "Mammoth" splits between three related storylines in New York, the Philippines and Thailand.

Rarely has a filmmaker experienced as rapid a rise and fall as Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. His intimate 1999 romance Fucking Åmål (a.k.a. Show Me Love) and his sprawling 2000 comedy Together were praised for their warmth and insight. Then he swapped optimism for pessimism with 2002’s heartbreaking (but artful) Lilya 4-Ever. After that, Moodysson tested audiences with the intentionally repellant A Hole In My Heart and the aggressively experimental Container, and in just a few short years, he went from being a favorite of critics and audiences to being a director whose name evokes winces ...

It should come as no surprise, really, that Lukas Moodysson’s Mammut - or Mammoth as it will be known in English - seems to have very little in common with the Swedish director’s previous films Container and A Hole In My Heart. Really, that much was guaranteed the moment that Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams were cast in the leads. You just can’t cast actors like that and then ask them to endure the sorts of things Moodysson has subjected his actors to in earlier efforts and while I could see Bernal doing it I can’t imagine Williams ever willingly subjecting herself to the sort of raw emotional battering - to say nothing of the expose flesh - of those sorts of films. But, honestly, I don’t know that I expected it to be quite this much of a change.

Mammut is quite easily...

• Ioncinema’s indie king of 2006, Gael Garcia Bernal, is shaping up to take home the number one honors in 2007 as well. The Mexican actor is now slated to star in Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth, his follow up to 2006’s experimental drama Container. The Swedish writer/director/poet Moodysson established a reputation as an envelope-pushing filmmaker with his previous work Fucking Amal (Show Me Love), Together and Lilya 4-ever. Mammoth, Moodysson’s first English-language narrative, follows a successful New York couple, their daughter and her Filipino nanny. It is scheduled to shoot in New York, Thailand, The Phillipines and Sweden beginning in October. Bernal, who we all know and love from Amores Perros, La Mala Educación and everything else he has appeared in, is currently working with Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore on Fernando Meirelles’ dramatic thriller Blindness. This means there are now at least two chances to see Gael

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