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Mia (Ruth Vega Fernandez) is on the traditional track: successful architecture career, a wonderful apartment in the city, and she’s engaged to her boyfriend of many years, Tim (Joakim Nätterqvist). Mia and Tim travel to celebrate the 60th birthday and engagement of Mia’s father, Lasse (Krister Henriksson) to Elisabeth (Lena Endre). Mia’s younger brother, Oskar (Tom Ljungman), introduces her to Elisabeth’s daughter, Frida (Liv Mjönes). The idea is for everyone to get along like one big happy family. As with so many Scandinavian films I’ve seen recently there is so much beauty in Kiss Me – from the actors themselves to the lighting as well as the Swedish countryside. Writer and director Alexandra-Therese Keining captures one of the most intimate love stories I’ve seen in years. There is nothing trite or syrupy about Mia and Frida as we witness the evolution of their relationship. Keining...

Sweden is known worldwide for its fantastic film industry. The Swedes know how to entertain and this is extremely evident in their high-budget film-to-tv program, Arn: The Knight Templar - The Complete Series, a series which follows Arn, a young boy who grows into a noble knight. Arn is the most expensive production in Swedish cinema with a total budget of Us $30 million. The complete series is now out on Blu-ray and it is a truly wonderful piece of Medieval entertainment.

Based on Jan Guillou’s epic bestselling trilogy, Arn is a riveting tale of a young man and his quest to overcome evil and find his true love. Arn Magnusson (Joakim Natterqvist) is a skilled swordsman who, as a penance for his sins, is sent off to war as a Knight Templar. The program shows him do battle with unsavory individuals, navigate hellish scenes so that he may...

Kiss Me

Written and directed by Alexandra-Therese Keining

Sweden, 2011

Like in Mulholland Drive, the first intimate encounter between the two female leads is delicately depicted. Perfuse with undeniable eroticism and composed with such seductive elegance, this moment is mediated on absolute and instinctive passion. Framed amongst the forbidden circumstances of their carnal convergence, the kiss, when juxtaposed, enkindles an emotional dialectic of forlorn beauty.

With gorgeously regal cinematography and unequivocally captivating performances, this beauty is deeply embedded into Alexandra-Therese Keining’s Kiss Me, a classic tale of love destined to become a classic of its own.

The film centers on Mia (Ruth Vega Fernandez), a tightly wound, anal-retentive woman. With her business partner and fiancé Tim (Joakim Nätterqvist), she visits her father (Krister Henriksson) at his engagement ceremony, where she meets Frida (Liv Mjönes), the free-spirited daughter of his wife-to-be (Lena Endre from the Swedish Millennium Series Trilogy). Initially perplexed by Frida’s unabashed transparency,...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 5, 2012

Price: DVD $29.98, Blu-ray $34.98

Studio: Entertainment One

There are battles a'plenty in the medieval action-adventure TV series Arn: The Knight Templar

Costing approximately $35 million to produce, the 2007 television mini-series Arn: The Knight Templar is the most lavish production ever undertaken in Scandinavia.

Set in Sweden and the Middle East in the 12th Century, the medieval action-adventure show tells the saga of Arn Magnusson (Joakim Nätterqvist), the son of a high-ranking Swedish nobleman, who is educated in a monastery and sent to the Holy Land as a knight templar to do penance for a forbidden love. Needless to say, there are a helluva lot of battles, betrayals, love affairs, intrigue and acts of gallantry that go down over the course of Arn’s journey.

Directed by Peter Flinth and based on the historical novels of Jan Guillou, the two-hour-plus Arn also stars Stellan Skarsgard (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo...