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In this moving and funny documentary, Swedish TV presenters Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson try to rekindle Filip’s father’s zest for life on a road trip to France

‘Do you want to rot away in an old armchair?” asks Filip Hammar, a Swedish TV presenter, talking to his dad. In this charming, often hilarious documentary, Hammar takes 80-year-old Lars on a road trip to the south of France; the idea is to rekindle Lars’s spark, shake a bit of life back into him. Since retiring as a French teacher, Lars has been sitting around at home, steadily more depressed and frail. Hammar wants to show his dad that life is worth living. But as you’d expect from a documentary this heart-warming, Hammar has a lesson or two to learn himself.

For the trip, Hammar has bought a knackered old Renault 4, the same car the family had when he was a kid.

After the hopeful signs of recovery over the last two years, attendance in all five markets dropped again in 2024, by a small margin of 3% in Denmark to nearly 13% in Norway. Post Covid effects and Hollywood strikes that led to a lack of U.S. tentpoles were blamed for the decline, however mitigated in some territories by the strong performance of domestic fare.

In Finland, local titles secured a record 31.6% market share, with the local epic love story “Stormskerry Maja” leading the charge. In Sweden, the local champion was the heart-warming documentary “The Last Journey” in which the TV personalities Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson (aka Filip & Fredrik) travel to France to rekindle the zest for life of Filip’s aging dad. The Swedish Oscar entry largely contributed to the country’s 22% market-share and biggest ticket sales in seven years.

In Iceland, it was Hollywood-Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur who delivered the...

Levan Akin’s Crossing and Frida Kempff’s The Swedish Torpedo headed the winners at Sweden’s Guldbagge national film awards, presented in Stockholm on Monday, January 13.

Crossing won the best film award, presented to producer Mathilde Dedye – the second time Akin and Dedye have taken the top Guldbagge award, after And Then We Danced in 2020.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Akin received the best director prize, with the film also winning best cinematography for Lisabi Fridell, and best sound design for Anne Gry Friis Kristensen and Sigrid Dpa Jensen.

Crossing opened the Panorama strand at last...

The Last Journey tells the beautiful and wonderfully uplifting story of Swedish filmmaker Filip Hammar's efforts to help his beloved elderly father find his "spark" again. The acclaimed documentary, also honored as Sweden's entry for Best International Film at the upcoming 97th Academy Awards, addresses aging's hard truths with an endearing lens. It's difficult to watch a parent give up after a lifetime of vibrancy. Especially when they were a treasured source of inspiration, learning, and joy to others. Filip's mission doesn't go nearly as planned, but does accomplish its primary goal with heartwarming conviction.

Filip holds his father's hand as he's strapped in for an Mri. 80-year-old Lars Hammar trembles with fragility. Later, at the family home in Köping, Lars sits dejected in his favorite "Belgian armchair." Filip and Tiina, his fit-as-a-fiddle mother, comment that Lars hasn't left the house or done anything in nearly a decade.

A great documentary can make you fall in love with a real person you had never encountered before viewing a film. Such is the case, for me, with Lars Hammar, the protagonist of the Oscar-contending documentary The Last Journey.

Dear Lars spent a career teaching French to kids in Sweden. Reaching a certain age, he stepped away from the classroom to a future he imagined would sparkle with adventure and travel. Alas, in retirement he felt the increasing gravitational pull of his comfy recliner, and instead of journeying abroad, he sank deeper into the cushions – and then deeper into depression.

“He seems to have lost his spark,” his wife Tiina notes with concern in the film directed by Filip Hammar – the couple’s son — and Fredrik Wikingsson.

Directors Fredrik Wikingsson (left) and Filip Hammar in ‘The Last Journey’

The filmmakers gained fame in Sweden for their work as television hosts,...

Alexander Skarsgard hosted a screening of Sweden’s biggest documentary!

The 48-year-old Swedish actor took the stage and posed for photos at a screening of the movie The Last Journey held at Ross House on Monday (December 9) in Los Angeles. He posed for photos at the event with director and star of the film Filip Hammar, as well as Swedish actress Agnes Lindström.

Here’s the synopsis for the documentary: In a desperate attempt to help his father regain his zest for life, filmmaker Filip Hammar takes his dad on a surprise road trip to France, retracing the same journey they made every summer during Filip’s childhood. With the help of his best friend and fellow filmmaker Fredrik Wikingsson, Filip is confident this trip will invigorate his dad by reliving some of the best moments of his life. An honest, genre-defying look at death’s approach as seen through...

Deadline on Monday launched the streaming site for its Contenders Film: Documentary, spotlighting eight nonfiction films in the awards-season spotlight. The virtual showcase took place Sunday.

This year’s feature documentaries included a healthy cross-section of titles taking on topics ranging from politics and social justice to war, family, art and music, with creatives and their subjects joining for panel conversations about their projects.

Click here to launch the streaming site.

Movies in this year’s lineup include Abramorama’s America’s Burning, with executive producer Michael Douglas joining the conversation; Amazon MGM Studios’ I Am: Celine Dion and Frida; Boat Rocker and Anonymous Content’s War Game; DailyWire+’s Am I Racist?, the year’s highest-grossing doc; National Geographic Documentary Films’ Sugarcane, Nexico’s The Last Journey, also Sweden’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature; and Together Films’ Mediha.

In addition to the Oscar-winning Douglas, among the...

Deadline on Monday launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: International, its daylong showcase of movies in the conversation for this year’s International Feature Oscar race.

The casts, directors, writers and producers behind 13 movies joined Deadline’s reporters and editors at the virtual awards-season event Saturday for panel discussions about their films’ journeys to being submitted by their respective countries for the Academy Awards.

Click here to launch the livestream.

This year’s list of films includes 815 Pictures’ Old Fox (representing Taiwan), Dawson Films’ Waves (Czech Republic), FAMart Association’s Three Kilometers to the End of the World (Romania), Leyth Production and Hamzeh Mystique Films’ Take My Breath (Tunisia), Lizart Film’s Under the Volcano (Poland), Mavi Film’s Life (Turkey), Nexiko’s The Last Journey (Sweden), Outsider Pictures’ Queens (Switzerland), Sony Pictures Classics’ I’m Still Here (Brazil) and Kneecap (Ireland), Tanweer Productions’ Murderess (Greece), La Terraza Films’ Saturn Return...

Swedish duo Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson directed and starred in the documentary The Last Journey. In the film, Sweden’s submission to the International Feature Oscar race, Hammar and Wikingsson take Hammar’s father, Lars, a retired teacher, on a road trip through France to help him deal with his depression.

Hammar said at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary awards-seasons showcase that he realized the trip and the film reflected a journey he himself needed to take to accept his aging parents.

“In the end, this film is more about my journey than my dad’s journey in many ways,” Hammar said. “Accepting the fact that he’s never going to be the guy he once used to be. I started out wanting him to find his spark again, wanted him to maybe just be my dad as I remember him. But with this trip, I think I’ve come to notice that,...

In some years, a single film seemingly dashes unimpeded to the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature — Summer of Soul in 2022, for instance, or Citizenfour in 2015. This is not one of those years.

In a notably wide-open race, 169 feature documentaries have qualified for Academy Awards consideration in 2024, all vying for a place on the shortlist, the key step before moving on to a nomination. There are some favorites, of course, including Sugarcane, directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie. The film from National Geographic is among the documentaries we’re spotlighting today at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary awards-season event, which gets underway at 9 a.m. Pt and serves as an essential guide to navigating a diverse and dynamic field of Academy Award hopefuls.

Click here to launch the livestream.

Sugarcane is both timely and timeless — a story of family reconciliation set in the context of the abusive Indian Residential...

Household names at home but working under the moniker of Filip och Fredrik, Swedish TV hosts and journalists Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson are now in the international spotlight with their documentary The Last Journey, Sweden’s Oscar entry.

The movie follows a road trip they organize for Hammar’s elderly father, retired French teacher Lars, taking him back to his favorite holiday destination in the South of France in a bid to reignite his spark for life.

The work – touching on such universal themes as aging and the shifting relationships between parents and children over time – has drawn more than 400,000 spectators in Sweden, making it the highest-grossing documentary ever in the country.

Related: Best International Feature Film Oscar Winners Through The Years: Photo Gallery

“It started out as a private project,” Hammar explained during Deadline’s Contenders International panel. “I’d been talking to my mom because she called...

Michael Gracey’s Robbie Williams biopic musical Better Man will open the 36th annual Palm Springs Film Festival on Thursday, January 2, while The Penguin Lessons, directed by Peter Cattaneo and starring Steve Coogan in the heartwarming story of a teacher who rescues and adopts an adorable penguin, closes it out January 13. Both films had premieres at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this year, and Better Man first had its world premiere at Telluride.

As always a hallmark of Psiff are screenings of numerous entries into the Oscar International Feature Film race, this year with 35 scheduled to screen in the desert.

The festival has programmed 158 films from 71 countries including 68 premieres. The lineup also includes sections like Talking Pictures, a focus on Spanish films with a spotlight on Pedro Almodóvar, New Voices New Visions, Modern Masters, Queer Cinema, Cine Latino, True Stories,...

On Tuesday, the Palm Springs International Film Festival (Psiff) announced its official 2025 lineup for the nearly two-week event that’s being held from Jan. 2 to Jan. 13.

The opening night movie will be Paramount Pictures’ “Better Man,” starring Robbie Williams and directed by Michael Gracey, which chronicles the pop star’s meteoric rise and dramatic fall. And the festival will close with Sony Pictures Classics’ “The Penguin Lessons,” starring Steve Coogan and directed by Peter Cattaneo, in the dramedy about a teacher whose life changes when he adopts a penguin. In all, Psiff will screen 158 films from 71 countries, including 68 premieres.

Artistic director Lili Rodriguez said, “Our lineup this year is truly something special. In true Psiff fashion, it spans genres and crosses borders to bring an exciting mix of films to the Coachella Valley. Over the past year, our Palm Springs International Film Festival team has carefully crafted a program that celebrates the art of storytelling,...

The Palm Springs International Film Festival is set to kick off on Jan. 2 with “Better Man,” directed by Michael Gracey, while the closing film on Jan. 12 will be “The Penguin Lessons,” directed by Peter Cattaneo.

The lineup will feature 35 of the international feature film Oscar submissions. Over 11 days, the festival will screen 158 films from 71 countries, including 68 premieres.

Also set are a focus on Spanish films including a spotlight on Pedro Almodóvar, and the return of sections such as New Voices New Visions, Modern Masters, Queer Cinema, Cine Latino, True Stories and World Cinema Now.

“Better Man” is based on the true story of the rise, fall and return of British musician Robbie Williams. Cattaneo will be in attendance for “The Penguin Lessons,” a dramedy about a schoolteacher in militaristic Argentina who rescues a penguin.

Several of the honorees from the Palm Springs International Film Awards are set to participate in the Talking Pictures screenings,...

“Dahomey,” “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” and “Sugarcane” are among the 20 nonfiction films that have made the shortlist for the International Documentary Association’s 2024 IDA Documentary Awards, the IDA announced on Thursday morning.

The shortlisted features come from 21 different countries and include works by Mati Diop (“Dahomey”), Raoul Peck (“Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”). The IDA’s feature shortlist is typically idiosyncratic in that it doesn’t include several of the most acclaimed and highest-profile nonfiction films of the year, including “Will & Harper,” “Daughters,” “Piece by Piece,” “Mountain Queen” and “Union.”

Of the 20 films on the IDA shortlist, eight also appeared on the Doc NYC list of likely awards titles: “Black Box Diaries,” “Dahomey,” “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” “No Other Land,” Queendom,” “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” and “Sugarcane.”

The IDA’s shortlist...

Sweden’s international feature submission for the 97th Academy Awards has been snapped up by Universal Pictures Content Group (Upcg).

Upcg has acquired all international rights to the film, with Universal Pictures International planning a theatrical release across multiple territories. It became Sweden’s highest-grossing documentary ever upon its domestic release.

The feature documentary, directed by Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson, follows the duo as they take a roadtrip across France with Hammar’s father Lars, a retired schoolteacher.

After Lars winds down his 40-year-career, Hammar expects his father to enjoy a “third age” with travel, wine and experiences. Instead, he watches him become increasingly tired and disinterested. The answer, Hammar realizes, is to recreate the same French road trip they used to take as a family in the distant past – a move he hopes will rekindle his father’s zest for life.

“This unique film has a special place in all our hearts,...

They call it The Last Journey, a beautifully moving documentary about family, aging, and the past. Directed by brothers Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson, it tells the story of Filip taking his 80-year-old father Lars on a road trip to recreate the vacations of their youth.

Ever since retiring from teaching French, lively Lars has seemed lost, spending his days in an armchair. Hoping to rekindle something special, Filip packs them into a trusty old Renault and heads for the French coast, a childhood destination of wonderful summer breaks.

What follows is part laugh-out-loud funny and part tearjerking, as the trio encounters mishaps on the open road and nostalgia around every corner. Lars was always the fun-loving, sing-song father figure at the center of family get-togethers.

But time marches on for all of us, and now his energy is fading. Filip struggles to accept this change, going to great lengths...

Unfolding as a humorous and heartbreaking road movie, the highly relatable “The Last Journey” is a tender portrait of the love that filmmaker Filip Hammar bears for his ailing 80-year-old father Lars. Hoping to rekindle the older man’s zest for life, Filip and his best friend and co-director Fredrik Wikingsson drive him to the French coastal town where they used to spend their holidays, but in the end, it’s the in-denial Filip who must come to grips with the indignities that aging brings and what time makes inevitable. On another level, the film serves as a tribute to teachers and an affirmation of how inspirational and memorable the good ones can be.

With more than 400,000 admissions to date in Sweden, this life-affirming documentary shattered box office records and is still in theaters after 32 weeks. As Sweden’s international feature submission, it has the bones to be a dark horse candidate.

The International Documentary Association has added 11 more films to its FallDocs screening series, an important FYC showcase for Oscar-contending documentaries.

Among them is No Other Land, the film directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers that offers a ground level view of life for Palestinian residents of a West Bank community, who face expulsion from their homes by the Israel Defense Forces. The documentary has won well over a dozen awards around the world, including the Berlinale Documentary Award and the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlinale.

Another of the newly added films — Zurawski v Texas, directed by Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault — will screen at FallDocs on October 29 at The Culver Theater in Culver City, Calif. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton are among the executive producers of the timely documentary, which examines “A group of women denied abortions, even as their lives are at risk,...

Sweden has selected The Last Journey as its candidate for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

The documentary by popular Swedish TV hosts and journalists Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson, known at home as Filip och Fredrik, sees the duo take Hammar’s father Lars on a road trip to France.

Lars has recently retired after 40 years as a French teacher but instead of a “third age” of travel, wine and experiences with his wife, he becomes passive and tired. By making the same road trip that the family used to make when Filip was a child, and staging some of life’s most beautiful moments, they hope to rekindle Lars’ spark.

The doc is produced by Nexiko in co-production with Nordisk Film Distribution, Rmv Film and collaboration with Svt.

The work has proven a hit at the Swedish box office this year, drawing more...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2, 2024.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Peter Sarsgaard, the veteran character actor who has received some of the best notices of his career this year for his performance on the Apple TV+ drama series Presumed Innocent and in the Paramount film September 5, will receive the Newport Beach Film Festival’s Film Performance of the Year Award and record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast live in front of a festival audience, Nbff announced on Tuesday.

Sarsgaard’s award presentation and podcast recording will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 23, during the 25th edition of Nbff, which will run Oct. 17-24.

The fest also announced its film lineup, which includes 112 films from 19 countries, including 16 world premieres, 10 U.S. premieres, 16 North American premieres, 13 West Coast premieres and 10 Southern California Premieres

This year’s Nbff will open on Oct. 17 with the world premiere of Simon West’s Old Guy, with West and star Chrostoph Waltz in attendance,...

Paola Cortellesi’s Italian comedy-drama There’s Still Tomorrow won two prizes at the Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund, which closes its 52nd edition today.

Cortellesi’s film, which debuted at Rome Film Festival last year, took the Audience Award, and the €30,000 Eurimages Audentia Award, which aims to promote greater gender equality in the film industry.

Scroll down for the full list of Haugesund winners

Set in postwar 1940s Italy, There’s Still Tomorrow follows a woman breaking family traditions after receiving a mysterious letter. The film was a box office smash hit in its home country, taking €37m and still in...

HBO's "7 Days in Hell" airs this Saturday, July 11, at 10 Pm Et/Pt and whew, it's not good. Starring Andy Samberg and "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington as rival tennis players, the 45-minute special is a send up of the 2010 Wimbledon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, which ran for three days. Bad boy American, Aaron Williams (Samberg) and British home favorite Charles Poole (Harington) battle it out over the course of seven days with interviews and vignettes spliced in-between each day's play and with every passing minute it weighs heavier and heavier on your soul. Williams is something of an Andre Agassi, tennis bad boy that falls on hard times after killing a linesman with an errant serve, while Poole is a dimwitted Brit who can hardly tie his own shoes. Everything from weather to sex with streakers, phone calls from the Queen of England, sex with streakers,...

Following the first trailer that debuted earlier this month, HBO has debuted the full-length trailer for the upcoming comedy special 7 Days in Hell with even more revealing and hilarious footage. Starring Andy Samberg (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Saturday Night Live) as Aaron Williams and Kit Harington (Testament of Youth, HBO's Game of Thrones) as Charles Poole, the HBO special presentation 7 Days in Hell debuts Saturday, July 11 (10:00-10:45 p.m. Et/Pt). Prior to its debut on the main HBO channel, 7 Days in Hell will be available on HBO Now and HBO Go, starting July 8.

They were two of the biggest tennis stars of their day: Aaron Williams, a hyper-malcontent American bad boy, and Charles Poole, a dim-witted prodigy who carried England's hopes for a championship on his shoulders. In 2001, these sworn archrivals met for the longest and greatest tennis match of all time: a seven-day, five-set marathon that took literally everything out of them.

Andy Samberg in 7 Days in HellPhoto: HBO HBO will premiere the movie 7 Days in Hell on Saturday, July 11 (10:00-11:00 p.m. Et/Pt) as Andy Samberg and Kit Harington star as tennis stars Aaron Williams, a hyper-malcontent American bad boy, and Charles Poole, a dim-witted prodigy who carried England's hopes for a championship on his shoulders. Today the first full trailer for the movie has arrived. Clearly inspired by the 2010 Wimbledon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, which went on for 11 hours and 5 minutes over the course of three days, the story here is set in 2001 wherein the two tennis rivals play a seven-day, five-set marathon. The movie also features appearances by Fred Armisen, David Copperfield, Lena Dunham, Chris Evert, Will Forte, Karen Gillan, Filip Hammar, Jim Lampley, Howie Mandel, John McEnroe, Soledad O'Brien, Michael Sheen, Mary Steenburgen, June Squibb and Serena Williams. Watch the 7 Days in...