Lilya 4-Ever

Lilja 4-ever is an excellently-crafted film created by and for Swedes to help stimulate public debate and redress the issue of the vulnerability of immigrant children. It's a cruel, enlightening, compelling watch for anyone in the West, but it's most definitely not a movie for escapism, it's not an After School Special, and it's a world away from the endless contemporary assault/insult of bald neocon propaganda on Anglo-American screens.

Unless you're very, very dead inside, Lilja 4-ever will horrify you, move you to tears, and leave you speechless...at least in its immediate aftermath. And if you are dead inside, the implicit subject is inexorable capitalist alienation and trauma, so why not catch a representation of your own inner life on film? Maybe you can work it into a drinking game.

Based on actual, turn-of-the-21st-century suicides of escaped post-Soviet child prostitutes in the suburbs of Sweden, Lilja 4-ever is a well-done drama, featuring terrific acting--especially by Oksana Akinshina and Artyom Bogucharsky. It presents moody and stark cinematography, fine script-writing, and solid direction. Lilja 4-ever is not a documentary, but its subject is relentlessly grim and real: the tragic personal results of the continued, desperate corrosion of Eastern European society and its tacit, rapaciously opportunistic exploitation in the isolated, commuter highway-bound suburbs of the West. For its success in making these links visible and cinematic, Lilja 4-ever is outstanding.

I saw Lilja 4-ever when it was released in Stockholm in 2002. You can't watch this particular movie waiting for some good one-liners to repeat to the guys around the water cooler. You may not be able to identify with Lilja. You don't need to feel like she could be your girlfriend. For this movie to work, and to grasp who Lilja is, you need to be able to feel human compassion, sympathy and empathy, and to recognize and appreciate the drama in our socio-economic connections.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best movies never get the attention that they deserve. Take for instance this "Lilja 4-ever". It has never been in any large movie theater and is only shown on festivals or on specialized TV stations that broadcast more non-commercial movies. That's also how I got to see it. I knew about this movie, but had never been able to give it a try, until two days ago when it was finally shown on national television.

Lilja is a 16 year old Estonian girl who will move with her mother and her mother's new boyfriend to the USA. But when it's about time to leave, her mother tells her that she can't come with them right now. She will have to stay for a while, following them to the USA afterward and until then her mother will send her money. But once they are gone, it quickly gets clear that they have abandoned Lilja and don't want to see her ever again. She doesn't really have anyone to take care of her and has only one real friend, the young boy Volodja. Completely out of money, she decides to sell the only thing that she has left, her body. She picks up older men in a disco until one day she meets Andrej, a nice boy of her own age. She falls deeply in love with him and when he tells her that she can come with him to Sweden to find a well-payed job and a beautiful apartment so she can start an entire new life far away of all the misery, she is convinced that for once and for all her luck has changed...

Just after I saw the movie, I went to bed to get some sleep, but the entire movie just kept spooking through my head all the time, keeping me awake for hours. Even now, I'm still thinking about the horrible faith of that poor girl. That has a lot to do with the excellent acting of course. Oksana Akinshina is a complete stranger to me, but her performance was so incredibly good and so believable, that you might easily forget that you are watching a movie instead of a real life documentary. Artyom Bogucharsky as Volodya, Pavel Ponomaryov as Andrej, Liliya Shinkaryova as Lilja's aunt,... None of them is famous or has played in many other movies, but one by one, they play their roles as if they have never done anything else in their entire lives.

"Lilja 4-ever" isn't exactly a movie that will make you happy. I would even say that its story will leave you behind completely devastated, but will also keep you thinking about Lilja for days after you've seen it. That's what happened to me and that's something that I haven't experienced too often yet. If you are strong enough to cope with the hard reality, then you should definitely give this movie a try. In my opinion there is only one appropriate rating for a movie like this one and that is 10/10!!!

In the former Soviet Union, 16-year old Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) lives with her mother and new boyfriend, and is excitedly awaiting a relocation to the United States. It turns out her mother doesn't want her there, and takes off with the promise of Lilya following later, leaving Lilya alone in her apartment. Her aunt then throws her out, giving her the run-down flat of a recently deceased old man, and Lilya finds herself without any money, and only the young Volodya (Artyom Bogucharskiy) as a friend. Desperate, she discovers how easy it is to make money from whoring herself out, and then meets the handsome Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov), who invites her to live with him in Sweden. Despite Volodya's warnings, she decides to take his offer, but it soon becomes apparent that there is more to his Andrei's promises.

Based on a true story of a young girl who was trafficked to Sweden only to find herself imprisoned and forced to have sex for money, director Lukas Moodysson's film is set mostly in a very grim reality. Similar both to the social realism of Ken Loach, and the relentless and uncomfortable degrading of it's lead female character that is so prominent in Lars von Trier's films, Moodysson film is certainly brutal. As Lilya (played with a tragic naivety by Akinshina) is being abused in Sweden, we are treated to a POV montage of the various perverts and abusers, sweating and breathing into the camera. We live through the whole thing through the eyes of Lilya, a character of almost operatic tragedy, who suffers for the sins of others in a country ravaged by poverty, glue-sniffing and boredom.

But Moodysson wisely doesn't keep everything grim. In the final third, as Lilya suffers the most, the film often turns dream-like and fairy- tale. He introduces angels and dream sequences, as Lilya finds herself drifting through existence in an almost coma-like state, with her dreams and fantasies her only relief. These scenes (and there are only a few) are not flashy or whimsical, but are subtle and simplistic, in a similar way that Wim Wenders portrayed his angels in Wings of Desire (1987). It's a powerful tool that makes Lilya's plight all the more profound. The film plays out almost like a cruel fairy-tale, only set very much in the real world. Lilya 4-Ever is a hard film to sit through, but is rich in humanity, even though most of its characters are certainly devoid of it.

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When "Lilya 4-ever" premiered in Sweden 15 years ago, it shattered many hearts and gave fire to a debate on human trafficking that would last for years. I finally watched Moodysson's amazing film and it broke my heart too.

Twitter: @7thArtShortRevs (Mårten Larsson).

It is not often that everyone is quiet after a movie at the cinema. Some were crying, others did not know how to act, ending up staring out in to the emptiness. For me, nothing was the same after I did leave the cinema. I know that it sounds like a cliché, but I tell you, it is not. Some of these people were laughing before they sat down, but the haunting beginning of the movie did wake everyone up. Every day you do wake up, when you are working you do hurry away; maybe you take your children with you to leave them at the nearby kindergarten. If it is a holiday, maybe you are of to meet some friends. In the evening you come home, you are cooking and eating. Maybe you do sit down with your wife and kids watching a good TV-show. When the night comes, you are wishing your child's a good night's sleep before you go to bed. It is not easy for you to know what is going on inside the apartment of your neighbour. The time that pass from the beginning to the end is the time the director Lukas Moodysson have to convince you that the reality is not as good as you may think, or maybe you already know, all to well.

The reality of leading character Lilja becomes slowly a part of your reality. You can choose to see Lilja in two different points of view. You can see her as a part of a fairly tale, and nothing more, than her life story will disappear after the movie in your shower. Or you may see her as she is; a picture of what life can do with people who are not as lucky as you, a picture of other girls in the same situation as she. The great acting of the 15 year old Russian actress Oksana Akinsjina makes it possible. I did almost forget that she is not Lilja when I did see the movie, it is heartbreaking when she is crying, and when she is happy her smile is the most wonderful you have seen that day. But a few minutes later you may see pain in her eyes. If you are thinking about what is happing in the movie, you will understand her reactions. When it is painful then she cries without hope, when it is too painful she doesn't seems to react at all (exactly like you!) and you don't need to imagine to feel the pain she have inside.

The one that will become more close to her than anyone else is the street kid and male leading character Volodja act by the 12 year old Artiom Bogutjarskij (his first movie). I have worked with street children and his acting is very authentic. When everything falls apart for Lilja, Volodja becomes her last hope, he is never leaving her in her mind he is always close. He is the one who is always there, the one that catches her when she falls. Lukas said in an interview that Volodja are a shape of Jesus in the end you will understand. These parts are telling about the dreams of Lilja, whom makes it easier to understand her vision of hope. Lukas is the best Swedish director now and maybe of all time. The integrity of his actors is intact, that he manages to do it in a movie like this shows how good as a director he is. He has a moving respect for Oksana and the way he cares about her integrity is the thing that makes this movie worth looking. His manuscript is trustworthy and don't have any illogical lacks. Nothing is darker than it could be in the reality. All characters are three dimensional and even the evil characters are human, even the victims are not just victims.

You may wonder if the reality is this dark. In a article in a Swedish newspaper Lukas Moodyson told that he had spoken with a social worker and he was told that some mothers do sell their own kids for 1 £ to the sex industry. Though the movie is fictional and not about her, many of the memorable things that are happening to Lilja in the movie did happen to Dangoule Rasalaite from Latvia between the 17th September 1999 and the 10th January 2000. Lukas read about her in an article. The reality is always worse than the fiction.

The young actors do carry the weight of the movie with grace. Their acting against each other is moving, it is a special chemistry between them. Lukas has the gift of finding the right persons for the characters in all is movies, and Lilja 4-ever is not an exception. Last Monday Lilja forever won 5 out of 6 gold beagles (the most important Swedish film award) it was nominated to (Artiom was also nominated for best performance by an actor). The awards it won were for best movie, best picture, best manuscript, best direction, and the most important of them all, best performance by an actress. Trafficking is the third biggest illegal industry in the world; it makes this movie so important. Lukas Moodysson and Oksana did manage to wake up this nation, to show that our reality is not as good as we thought. We can see it in the reactions of the cinema public, how people are talking about it afterwards, and in the newspapers. The Swedish government are working for the possibility to show this movie in schools all over the former Sovjet Union. Lukas has said that if this movie can convince one girl to make other decisions than Lilja and to many other young girls; this movie was worth making.

This movie is worth more than all the awards it has won and all the awards it will win. This movie can change your point of view, it is that message of hope it brings.

/Josef Lundström