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A graceful but overcautious rendering of a well-known 1912 Swedish novel by author Hjalmar Söderberg, "A Serious Game," from actor-turned director Pernilla August, with a screenplay by "An Education" director Lone Scherfig, contains shades of Ibsen, and faint echoes of Ingmar Bergman's less experimental films, without ever achieving the piercing insights and intimate authenticity of those touchpoints. But the somewhat familiar tale of ruinous extramarital passion is elevated by the film's visual restraint — a cool Nordic palette of creams and pale grays framed in Academy ratio — and the solid performances from actors unafraid to commit to their frequently unlikeable characters. August's deliberate pacing and formal simplicity add thematic layers too: seldom has ungovernable passion seemed more premeditated, meaning that where often this sort of love story often has a kind of exculpatory tone (It was out of my hands! It was...

Read More: Terence Davies' Emily Dickinson Biopic, 'A Quiet Passion,' to Premiere in Berlin "A Serious Game," the new film from Swedish actress and director Pernilla August, is sure to be extremely classy.  Adapted from Hjalmar Söderberg's Swedish classic novel from 1912, "A Serious Game" is a timeless tale of two young people falling deeply in love with each other. Love is never as simple as we wish, and sacrifices soon have to be made. Starring Sverrir Gudnason ("Monica Z"), Karin Franz Körlof and Michael Nyqvist ("The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"), "A Serious Game" is sure to make all fans of foreign romance swoon.  "A Serious Game" premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival starting on February 15. ...

Don Cheadle’s Miles Davies’ biopic to get international premiere.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 11-21) has unveiled the eight-strong line-up for its Berlinale Special strand, which includes recent works by contemporary filmmakers and biopics of renowned personalities.

The programme includes the world premiere of Terence Davies’ drama biopic A Quiet Passion, which stars Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon as the celebrated American poet Emily Dickinson, charting her life from her early days as a young schoolgirl to her later years as a reclusive artist. Jennifer Ehle (Fifty Shades Of Grey) and Keith Carradine (Nashville) co-star.

The line-up also includes the international premiere of Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle’s directorial debut in which he also stars as jazz pioneer Miles Davis in late 1970s Manhattan, dealing with sycophants, industry executives, career highs and lows and memories of the love of his life, Frances Taylor.

Pernilla August’s A Serious Game will also world premiere...

The Berlinale Special, part of the official Berlin Film Festival program, has added five titles to the eight-strong lineup of contemporary works. Joining such previously announced films as Michael Moore’s Where To Invade Next, is Pernilla August’s A Serious Game. The adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg's classic romantic novel is based on a screenplay written by Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated director Lone Scherfig. An epic love story set in turn-of-the-20th-century Stockholm…...

Pernilla August’s new adaption of A Serious Game, scriped by Lone Scherfig, is among the 11 works-in-progress set to be introduced at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films

Swedish actress-turned-writer/director Pernilla August, whose latest film Beyond (Svinalängorna, 2010) garnered her three Guldbaggar – Sweden’s national film award – and the Nordic Council Film Prize, will introduce her new feature A Serious Game (Den allvarsamma leken) in New Nordic Films at the Norwegian International Film Festival (Aug 15-21) in Haugesund.

Norwegian director Anja Breien’s 1977 adaptation of Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg’s 1912 novel is also screening in the festival programme.

Danish writer-director Lone Scherfig has scripted the new version of the passionate love between Arvid and Lydia (Sverrir Gudnason, Karin Franz Körlof), which Patrik Andersson, Frida Barzgo and Fredrik Heinig are producing for A B-Reel Production.

A Serious Game is one of 11 new Nordic productions, which will be presented tomorrow and Thursday (Aug 19-20) at Haugesund’s Scandic Maritim: six from...

Final paintings, final books, and final films are often read into because of their terminating chronology. Did the artist know they were close to death? How is that shown in the art? When he died in 1968, Carl Dreyer had many projects lined up, including Medea and Jesus of Nazareth, which he had been preparing and researching for years, to the point of learning Hebrew. His last films, Ordet in 1955 and Gertrud in 1964, embody the exacting visual style he forged during his fifty-five-year career—a style he explicated in short essays written ten and twenty years before Gertrud. Being a director who worked with and without sound, we should trust Dreyer when he says film “first and foremost directs itself to the eye, and that the picture far, far more easily than the spoken word penetrates deeply into a spectator’s consciousness.”1 Gerturd is as much about the eponymous character's face...

The British Film Institute is partnering with Aardman Animations are launching a new scheme backed by £1 million of lottery funding to help support the development and production of new animated feature films and the creative talent making them. The BFI will provide funding for up to two years to three filmmakers or filmmaker teams to develop their projects with dedicated development support through the BFI Aardman Animation Development Lab. The process for developing animated feature films is lengthy and expensive limiting the opportunities for British filmmakers. Wallace & Gromit producer Aardman will work with the filmmakers – animators, writers, directors, producers – to shape their ideas with the aim of emerging with a set of greenlight-ready materials for their films, ready to advance to production. The closing date for applications is November 28.

Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason will topline The Serious Game, directed by Pernilla August and scripted by Lone Scherfig based on the novel by Hjalmar Söderberg.

Pernilla August and Lone Scherfig join forces on an adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg’s 1912 novel.

Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason (Monica Z) and Karin Franz Körlof (Nobody Owns Me) are to play the leading roles in The Serious Game.

The film will be directed by Pernilla August (Beyond) and has been scripted by Lone Scherfig (An Education, The Riot Club).

Based on Hjalmar Söderberg’s novel, published in 1912, the story centres on a man and a woman who fall in love when young, and remain in love, but stay separated and marry others.

The book was previously adapted for a 1945 film directed by Rune Carlsten and a 1977 feature, titled Games of Love and Loneliness, directed by Anja Breien.

August said: “The Serious Game is about the dream and longing for the one great love. About Lydia and Arvid who say no, when we want them to say yes.”

Producers are Patrik Andersson and Frida Bargo for B-reel in cooperation...

If you weren’t immediately distracted by Alexander Skarsgard’s nakedness in the True Blood finale, you may have noticed that Eric was reading a book while lounging on a snow-covered mountaintop in Sweden. EW has confirmed that the book is Den allvarsamma leken by Hjalmar Söderberg. Translation: The Serious Game. According to True Blood showrunner Brian Buckner, it was Skarsgard’s pick: “This was the book that Alex wanted to be reading because it is an old Swedish favorite.”

Per a synopsis on Amazon, the tale, published in 1912, is Sweden’s most celebrated and enduring love story: “Sweden at...

Colin Firth is set to play famed English playwright Noel Coward, in the Willy Holtzman-penned project, “Mad Dogs And Englishmen,” about Coward’s eventful two week stay at The Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1955. Although there’s still no director attached, this seems like a great role for the actor to sink his teeth into, as Coward was famous for what Time called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise.” So we’ll be definitely be looking forward to this project in the future. [Screen Daily]

Two giants of the Scandinavian cinematic world, Lone Scherfig (“An Education” and “One Day”) and Pernilla August (“Beyond”), are set to join forces together on an adaptation of the classic Hjalmar Söderberg novel, “The Serious Game.” The novel follows a couple who meet early in life, go their separate ways and then meet again when they are married to other people.

Some Scandinavians will take this news as though it’s a birthday gift; the rest of us, however, may not even know what to expect right off the bat. ScreenDaily reports that Lone Scherfig (An Education) has written an adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg‘s beloved period romance, The Serious Game, which will get the directing treatment from Swedish sensation Pernilla August — who, unfortunately, we probably best know for playing Shmi Skywalker in the first two Star Wars prequels. (She previously helmed 2010′s Beyond, which starred Noomi Rapace.) We can’t peg this one down ourselves, but, from the perspective of producer Patrik Andersson, it’s “a Scandinavian dream team.”

Although the novel, twice adapted for film, has a familiar arc — two people fall in love, separate, and have an affair later in life that ends poorly — the producers at B-Reel Feature Films are hoping to craft something that has more...