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      A Killing Jolts Sweden’s Rap Scene

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherEinar, the Swedish rapper who in the last few years had become one of the most dominant performers in the country’s hip-hop scene, as well as a major pop figure, was shot and killed last October. The case remains unsolved.The crime shined a light on the intersection between Sweden’s rap industry and gangs, on rising gun violence in Sweden, and also government neglect of marginalized communities and neighborhoods.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the ripple effect of Einar’s murder, the evolution of hip-hop in Sweden and how the last three years have radically changed the country’s rap scene.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterPetter Hallen, a veteran rap journalist and D.J. who hosts a show on the Swedish public service radio station P3 Din GataAlex Marshall, The New York Times’s European culture reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Sweden’s Songwriters Look to K-Pop

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      When the Swedish songwriter Ellen Berg first heard a K-pop track, in 2013, her reaction was typical of many Western listeners: “What the hell is this?” she recalled thinking.Berg, 31, was studying at Musikmakarna — a songwriting academy about 330 miles north of Stockholm — and her class had been asked to write a Korean hit.To get the aspiring songwriters in the mood, the students listened to “I Got a Boy” by Girls’ Generation, a wildly popular K-pop girl group. “It’s one of the craziest K-pop songs ever,” Berg said recently by phone. The track includes raps, bursts of high-speed dance music and even a verse in the style of a rock ballad. “It’s really five different songs in one,” Berg said.The class was given a week to write something like it. “It didn’t go very well,” Berg said, with a laugh.BTS performing during the American Music Awards in November in Los Angeles.Kevin Winter/Getty Images For MrcEight years later, Berg has certainly improved her K-pop songwriting abilities: She is now one of dozens of Swedish musicians who make a living exclusively from writing tracks for the genre. She has contributed to a hit for the pop juggernaut BTS, as well as to wildly successful tracks by groups like Red Velvet and Itzy.While Swedes have long been go-to figures for American pop stars — with songwriters like Max Martin and Shellback producing or co-writing tracks for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, the Weeknd and others — Swedish musicians are now becoming a force in K-pop, too.Berg is signed to EKKO, a Korea-based music publisher with studios in Stockholm, where Berg works alongside Moa Carlebecker, a sought-after K-pop songwriter better known by her stage name, Cazzi Opeia. The two musicians (who collaborate under the name Sunshine) also regularly write with another duo — Ludvig Evers and Jonatan Gusmark, who call themselves Moonshine — based in a studio next door. Seven other Swedish songwriters who work on K-pop tracks have studios in the same building.Berg, Carlebecker, Evers and Gusmark first worked together in 2017 on “Peek-a-Boo,” a Red Velvet track that Berg likened to an old “Scooby-Doo” episode or a trip to a haunted house. “Peek-a-Boo” has since been streamed more than 217 million times on YouTube.EKKO is not the only company pumping out K-pop in Stockholm. Cosmos, a publisher, has seven songwriters working full time on K-pop tracks, Peo Nylen, its creative director, said in an email. The Kennel, another songwriting company, employs 14 K-pop writers, said Iggy Strange-Dahl, one of its founders.K-pop may seem like a recent phenomenon to Western music fans who caught on with the rise of BTS, but Korean record labels have been seeking out European songwriters since the late 1990s in a bid for global success, said Michael Fuhr, a German academic who wrote a book about K-pop. “They had Max Martin productions in mind,” he said, adding that the first successful European K-pop writers were actually Finnish and Norwegian, not Swedish.Today, songwriters of many nationalities are trying to make K-pop hits, Fuhr said, attracted, in part, by the fact that Koreans still buy CDs, so there is a lot of money to be made. SM Entertainment, a Korean entertainment conglomerate, says on its website that it works with 864 songwriters worldwide, including 451 across Europe and 210 in North America.Fuhr said that many K-pop hits were written at songwriting “camps” organized by record labels or publishers who invite musicians from across the world. Over multiple days, songwriters work in teams to create new songs. (American pop songs are also commonly written this way.)Gusmark, left, and Evers working in the studio. They perform together as Moonshine.Felix Odell for The New York TimesCarlebecker said in a video interview that she became hooked on K-pop when she first heard it, in 2016. As a child, she loved the Spice Girls, she said — “I had all the posters, I had all the CDs” — so K-pop instantly felt familiar, with its multitude of girl and boy groups in which each member has a uniquely defined personality.She immediately grasped that K-pop tracks must have multiple sections so each group member has a chance to shine, she said, whether they want to rap, sing softly or belt out a chorus. Having so many sections provides a lot more opportunities to be creative than on a typical Western pop song, she added.“There are no rules in K-pop — you can have three hooks, one after each other, if you feel like it,” Carlebecker said. “You can be crazy and colorful, and that’s what appealed the most.”Carlebecker, who is covered neck-to-toe in tattoos — a look that would be unlikely on an actual K-pop star — said she knew only two words of Korean: “annyeonghaseyo” (hello) and “gamsahabnida” (thank you).But that didn’t get in the way of her songwriting, she said: Carlebecker writes in English, and then Korean songwriters add new lyrics to her melodies, often keeping in a few random English words to help the track stand out.In interviews, Berg and Carlebecker offered multiple theories to explain why Swedes produce such good K-pop tracks, including the country’s strong songwriting tradition and comprehensive music education system. Sweden is cold, Berg noted, which meant that there was often “nothing better to do” than stay in and work on music.For some Koreans, the reason is actually quite simple: Swedes write melodies that are so catchy, fans want to sing them at packed stadium shows and at their local karaoke bars.“Swedes seem to have an emotional understanding of us Koreans,” Michelle Cho, a Korean songwriter who also scouts foreign songwriters for Korean record labels, said in a telephone interview. “They write melodies that seem to really hit our emotions.”Whatever the reason, as K-pop booms, competition among songwriters around the world is becoming fierce. Evers, of Moonshine, said that a few years ago, some songwriters in Sweden used to look down on his work as “a bit lame,” as though he’d failed to land gigs with American or European musicians and now had to ply his trade in Asia. Now, Evers said, those same people were coming up to him in bars saying, “We should write K-pop sometime!”Thanks to his success, he added, he was starting to get a tiny insight into the life of a K-pop idol. K-pop fans regularly contacted Moonshine on social media to praise the duo for its work, Evers said, and a popular K-pop YouTube channel has interviewed him.Swedish K-pop writers are getting noticed in Sweden, too. In November, Carlebecker was named “international success of the year” at Sweden’s annual songwriting awards, beating Max Martin (and Moonshine). Articles about the songwriters have appeared in the country’s major newspapers, and Berg and Carlebecker have been interviewed for TV news.Still, Evers said, not everyone has grasped just how significant K-pop is becoming for Sweden’s music industry.“My grandma still doesn’t understand what I do for a living,” Evers said. “She doesn’t think it’s real.” More

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      A ‘High Priestess of Satanic Art’? This Organist Can Only Laugh.

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      For more than a decade, Anna von Hausswolff has been bringing the sound of pipe organs to rock fans. But Roman Catholic extremists have tried to stop her playing shows in churches.When Anna von Hausswolff, an acclaimed Swedish songwriter and organist, first heard that a conservative Roman Catholic website was calling her a satanist and demanding a concert boycott, she and her team laughed it off.“We thought it was hilarious,” von Hausswolff, 35, recalled in a recent interview. “The whole day we were laughing,”The site, Riposte Catholique, was firing its readers up ahead of a concert of von Hausswolff’s epic pipe organ music at a church in Nantes, a city in the west of France. Some of her fans were goths, the site said, and her songs were “more a black Mass than music for a church.” A music blogger had called her “the high priestess” of “satanic harmonies,” the site noted, and conservative Roman Catholic groups noticed that, on the track “Pills,” she sings, “I made love with the devil.”“We said, ‘This is such a great P.R. campaign,’” Von Hausswolff said. “I mean, ‘the High Priestess of satanic art.’ Wow!”But as soon as she arrived at the church in Nantes, the joking stopped. Outside were about 30 young men, most wearing black jackets and hoodies, protesting the show, Von Hausswolff said. The concert’s promoter told her that some men had just broken into the venue, trying to find her.Soon, there were 100 people blocking the church’s entrance. Von Hausswolff sat in the richly painted church, staring up at the organ that she’d hoped to play, listening to protesters chanting and banging on the doors outside as her fans shouted back at them.“There was a primal part of me that told me I was not safe,” she said. “I wanted to get out.” She canceled the show.In recent years, disagreements between conservatives and liberals over issues like gay marriage and abortion have become increasingly heated in parts of Europe. Von Hausswolff’s experience is an example of another tension point in the continent’s culture wars: In some countries, a small minority of Roman Catholics regularly protests art it considers blasphemous.Initially, when the campaign against her was just online, Anna von Hausswolff laughed off the accusations of Satanism. Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesCéline Béraud, an academic who studies the sociology of catholicism in France, said in a telephone interview that extremists had staged protests against artworks and plays in the country for the past 20 years. “It comes from a well organized minority who’re very good at getting attention in the media,” Béraud said.One of their regular targets is Hellfest, a rock music festival held every year close to Nantes. In 2015, a group of protesters broke into the site and set fire to some of the festival’s stage sets. Since then, protesters have regularly doused the festival site’s fields with holy water. Hellfest’s communications manager, Eric Perrin, said in an email that staff members recently found 50 gold pendants depicting the Virgin Mary scattered around the site. Since playing a real pipe organ in concert almost always means playing in church, von Hausswolff’s tour problems didn’t end when she left Nantes — even though some French bishops had issued statements of support. In Paris, she was scheduled to play the grand organ at St.-Eustache, a church widely considered a jewel of the French Renaissance, but after its priest was deluged with complaints, she instead performed a secret show at a Protestant church near the Arc de Triomphe.In December, protestors gathered outside a von Hausswolff concert in Brussels. “That was fine,” Von Hausswolff said. “They weren’t screaming or banging on doors.”Laurie Dieffembacq/Belga, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLater, in Brussels, about 100 people protested outside her show at a Dominican church, taking a more peaceful approach than their French counterparts and moving away from its doors when asked by police. At Nijmegen, the Netherlands, just two protesters appeared, standing quietly outside while holding signs with the message “Satan is not welcome.”Von Hausswolff is not someone you would expect to cause such a stir. She grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden, and said her childhood was “very creative.” (Her father, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, is a composer and performance artist.)As a teenager, she sang in a church choir, and dreamed of becoming a musician, but ended up training as an architect. Her music career only took off in 2009 when, age 23, she released a demo of piano songs called “Singing from the Grave” that quickly found a fan base in Sweden thanks to her soaring vocals. She was frequently compared to the English pop star Kate Bush.After an organ builder told her she could make beautiful pipe organ music, she gave it a go, she recalled, trying out the organ in Gothenburg’s vast Annedal Church. “When I reached the lowest note, I couldn’t believe my ears,” Von Hausswolff said. “I felt it through my whole body.”She’s since explored what the instrument can do across five albums, sometimes pairing it with a rock band and at other times performing solo. Her most recent, released this month, is a live album recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.Hans Davidsson, an organist who helps von Hausswolff probe the instrument’s capabilities, said that she “explores the organ with open ears, eyes and senses,” and had developed her “own musical language.” Her music was inspiring to many classical organists like him, he added. “It’s fortunate for us that she chose the organ,” he said.In the interview, von Hausswolff, who was wearing Christmas leggings covered in cartoon reindeer in Santa hats, denied she was a satanist. Von Hausswolff declined to say what her 2009 track “Pills” — in which she sings of satanic lovemaking — was about, since songs should be left open to interpretation, she said. But, she added, “If you’re asking me if I literally had sex with the devil, the answer is, ‘No.’”“I’m there to present my pipe organ art so that it hopefully can invoke deeper thought in people,” Von Hausswolff said of her work.Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesAs much as she was happy to joke about the accusations, the incidents last month had left a mark. She still felt scared by the French and Belgian protests, she said, and was also worried that churches might think twice about letting her play their organs, so as to avoid complaints.“I’m not a good Christian and never will be,” said von Hausswolff, adding that she saw herself as agnostic. “But I’m there to present my pipe organ art, so that it hopefully can invoke deeper thought in people.”She was already planning more church tours, she said. As long as she was welcome, she added, “I will go there, and I will play my music.” More

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      Erika Lust's Alternative Porn Vision

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      The Swedish moviemaker thinks pornography can create a society that sees sexuality as myriad and joyful, and where women’s pleasure matters.BARCELONA, Spain — When Billie Eilish called pornography “a disgrace” in a recent radio interview, the quote made headlines. The Grammy-winning musician said she had started watching at around age 11, to learn how to have sex, and that she was now angry about the way she felt porn misrepresented women.When people talk about pornography, they’re often referring, like Eilish, to its commercial, heterosexual variety, which is what most of the free porn online tends to be. On those sites, you’d be forgiven for thinking it all looks the same. But depending on the sexual politics and vision of its creator, porn can look wildly different.Take, for example, the work of the Swedish filmmaker Erika Lust. She has built her production company, Erika Lust Films, into an art-house pornography behemoth by offering something outside the porn mainstream. Most viewers watch Lust’s stylish, highly produced films by subscribing to her websites, where she also distributes videos by other like-minded directors. But her own films have also been screened in regular movie theaters in Berlin, London, Paris, Los Angeles and New York.“There’s not just one type of porn,” Lust said in an interview at her office in Barcelona, where she has lived since 2000. “People see it as one monolithic entity, but it’s not.”In the films Lust makes, she said her goal was for the female performers to have real orgasms. “When women watch porn, they need to see that women are being stimulated,” she said. “If there is a scene with penetrative sex, viewers need to see a woman using her hand or a vibrator at the same time — because that’s what works for most women.”Lust, 44, added that she had spoken with many young women who told her, “‘Something’s wrong with my body, I can’t reach an orgasm with a man,’ because they’re reproducing what they learn from online porn.”In Eilish’s radio interview, she said that the damage inflicted on her by online pornography went deeper still: In her view, it had “destroyed” her brain. The philosopher Amia Srinivasan has also recently considered porn’s effect on the mind, reviving feminist debates from the 1970s and ’80s.In “The Right to Sex,” Srinivasan’s 2021 best-selling essay collection, she argues that, “While filmed sex seemingly opens up a world of sexual possibility, all too often it shuts down the sexual imagination, making it weak, dependent, lazy, codified. The sexual imagination is transformed into a mimesis-machine, incapable of generating its own novelty.” (Srinivasan declined to be interviewed for this article.)Although in her book she argues against censoring explicit material — a move that often unfairly targets women and sexual minorities, she writes — the Oxford University academic advises young people to lay off porn if they want their sex lives to be “more joyful, more equal, freer.”“Perhaps then the sexual imagination could be coaxed, even briefly, to recall its lost power,” Srinivasan writes.“Sex is such a huge part of who we are,” Lust said, “and there are so many more stories to tell.”Monica FiguerasYet Lust said it was film’s capacity to excite the erotic imagination that first drew her to pornography. While studying political science at Lund University in Sweden, she said she read “Hard Core,” a book by Linda Williams that is regarded as a classic of feminist film criticism, and that argues that pornography is a way of communicating ideas about gender and sex.Feminist thinking led Lust to realize that porn, like many other cultural products, was mostly made by men, for men and from a narrow perspective: that of “middle-aged, heterosexual, white men,” she said. This male view of sexuality was “often misogynistic, in which women were reduced to tools for men’s orgasm,” she added. A lot of commercial porn is shot from a disembodied male perspective, and often the only part of a male performer that’s visible onscreen is his penis, Lust said.The films she directs and produces, on the other hand, show women with sexual agency, who stimulate their own clitorises and whose facial expressions communicate their emotional and psychological states. Lust’s performers have a natural, everyday look and include people of “different sexualities, skin colors and body shapes,” she said.Her films are also heavy on plot lines. Lust’s best-known series, “XConfessions,” are filmed depictions of her viewers’ real fantasies. Anyone can “confess” their imagined or real-life sex stories through the XConfessions website. If she likes the idea, she turns it into a film. The stories include classic and kinky fantasies and are sometimes made by guest directors, such as the Canadian cult queer filmmaker Bruce LaBruce. One of his “XConfessions” movies, “Valentin, Pierre and Catalina,” is a remake of François Truffaut’s classic movie “Jules and Jim,” a three-way polyamorous love story between a woman and two men.LaBruce, who just wrapped up a feature-length parody porn movie for Lust set in the fashion industry, said in a phone interview that he was not surprised by the recent resurgence of negative attitudes toward porn. “The idea that porn is a male way of controlling women — that used to be the provenance of the Christian right,” he said. “Now, the left and the right have kind of flipped.”The anthropologist Gayle Rubin, who was on the “pro-sex” feminist side of the 1970s and ’80s “sex wars,” opposing calls for censorship, said by phone that pornography was “easy to pick on” because, historically, it had been marginalized socially and legally.“You know in movies when you think the monster is dead, but it just keeps coming back?” she said. “These assumptions about porn just keep resurfacing, going back more than four decades.“Many people just don’t think as rigorously about porn as they do other topics. Porn is a special case in how it’s treated intellectually, which is badly — even among philosophers and others who should know better,” Rubin said.While the porn industry is not known for critical reflection, there are, however, events like the Berlin Porn Film Festival, an annual gathering that seeks to provide new perspectives on the genre — artistic, social and even philosophical. Paulita Pappel, a porn performer and director who is one of the event’s curators, said that porn was often “a mirror of wider problems in society.” She added that, “The more we scapegoat and stigmatize it, the less space there will be for porn to be diverse, and the less chance we have to change the bigger issues.”When Lust screened her first feature-length movie, “The Intern,” to a sold-out audience at the festival in October, many in the audience — men, women and gender nonconforming people, mostly in their 20 and 30s — said that they came to see the film in search of an alternative to traditional porn.“I’m here because my friend recommended Erika Lust, because she doesn’t make heteronormative porn,” said Levent Ekemen, 28, a graduate student. “Her films show sensuality, and they’re extremely erotic.”Lust, center, on the set of “The Intern,” her first feature-length movie, which had its premiere at the Berlin Porn Film Festival in 2021.Adriana EskenaziLust said she hoped that the movies on her websites can have an “expansive” effect on people’s sense of the erotic. “With some of LaBruce’s films with male interaction,” she said, “men tell me, ‘Erika, I’ve never watched this before, but it was on your site, and it was hot!’ People are opening up their sexual visions outside of what they might be used to seeing.”She added that she wanted to help create a society that sees sexuality as myriad and joyful, and where women’s pleasure matters. “The value filmmaking has when it comes to empathizing with other people is incredible,” she said. “Sex is such a huge part of who we are, and there are so many more stories to tell.”“I have a right to tell them,” she added. “And no one can stop me.” More

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      After Killing of Einar, Sweden Struggles With 'Gangster Rap'

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      Hip-hop, the country’s most popular music, has quickly become a lightning rod for Sweden’s long-roiling problems with gun violence and gang warfare.STOCKHOLM — Sweden had never seen anything like Einar. A hyperactive and self-assured young artist in a place increasingly obsessed with global hip-hop, by 19 he was one of the biggest rappers the country had ever produced.Born Nils Gronberg, Einar had the face of a puppy dog, the flow of an international rap connoisseur and the chest-puffed lyrics of a hardened gang member. He was also white and born in Sweden, a loaded distinction in a scene where most rappers come from immigrant backgrounds.Raised mostly by a single mother, Einar was noticed by age 10, with videos of his childhood freestyles shared regularly online. Later, while living in a home for wayward teenagers, he broke through with only his third song, a steely lover-boy track that topped the country’s pop charts. Soon, he was a dominant force on Spotify, becoming Sweden’s most-listened-to act in 2019, ahead of global giants like Ed Sheeran.Einar was huge on Spotify, and became Sweden’s most-listened-to act on the streaming service in 2019.Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency, via Associated PressBut one night in October, the country’s biggest crossover star became its foremost cautionary tale, shot multiple times and left to die outside his home.“We heard pom, pom, pom,” said Dumlee, an aspiring rapper who was with Einar that night. Dumlee, a convicted rapist affiliated with a gang called Death Patrol, said in an interview that he and Einar scattered to hide before he heard more shots minutes later: “Bam, bam, bam, bam.”Einar’s killing, which remains unsolved, has rocked Sweden’s rap scene. His fate and the violence that swirled around him in life have also put a very Swedish face on issues that have for years been roiling beneath the surface here, and given fresh urgency to debates in the political mainstream about rising gun violence, immigration and gang warfare.Some lawmakers, newspapers and parents have been left questioning the role of the music they have labeled — in a 1990s throwback — “gangster rap.”“We have never seen something like this before,” said Petter Hallen, a veteran rap journalist and D.J. who hosts a show on the Swedish public service radio station P3 Din Gata.He compared the situation to the societal strife that erupted in the United States around the killings of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur in the 1990s, and more recently around the style of rap known as drill music in both Europe and the United States.“You have the politicians involved, the media, the rap fans, celebrity culture, public service, taxpayer money, influencer culture, youth culture, race — all these ripples in all directions of Swedish society,” Hallen added, describing the confluence of factors that have captivated this Nordic country of 10 million people.More associated with Abba than with sharp-edged rap, Sweden has for at least six years been struggling with a tide of gang violence that has contributed to its shift from one of the safest countries in the world to among Europe’s most violent. Last year, there were at least 342 shootings resulting in 46 deaths (up from 25 shootings in 2015), along with dozens of bombings.That carnage had long been seen as an issue confined to ethnically diverse outer “suburbs,” where poorer housing feels dislocated from the gleaming wealth of the country’s largely white city centers.But Einar’s death — in a rich part of Stockholm, rather than a suburb — has broadened the debate and finger-pointing, with some saying rap has become a convenient boogeyman, especially with elections scheduled for this year.Shortly after the shooting, Mikael Damberg, Sweden’s interior minister at the time, told reporters that the culture around the music could drive people toward gangs. Hanif Bali, a member of the conservative Moderate Party, who last year complained about a major music award going to a rapper with a criminal conviction, said in an interview at Sweden’s parliament that radio stations should stop playing music by anyone found guilty of gang crime.Einar’s death has given fresh urgency to debates in the political mainstream about rising gun violence, immigration and gang warfare.Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency, via Associated PressMany Swedish rappers, especially Einar’s peers from neighborhoods like Rinkeby at the end of Stockholm’s subway lines, feel as if they are being used to deflect attention from politicians struggling to deal with crime.“How many rappers are there that are famous in Sweden? It’s, like, 20,” said Sebastian Stakset, the artist known as Sebbe Staxx, a member of the country’s first prominent gangster-rap group, Kartellen. “How many kids are there with guns out in the areas? Thousands.”“They’re just a reflection of a much bigger problem,” he said.Panic ZoneFor decades in the United States, rap has been tied to moral panics and blamed for urban violence. Europe, too, has recently seen swelling concern regarding its drill scenes, where deep bass lines combine with stark, hyperlocal descriptions of living, feuding and dying in struggling neighborhoods.Sweden’s growing problems with crime perhaps make it more susceptible to concern about the genre. When Magdalena Andersson became the country’s first female prime minister at the end of November, she used her first policy speech to assail gangs.In December, Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s newspaper of record, published an analysis of everyone arrested or prosecuted for gun offenses since 2017. About 85 percent were people born abroad, or had at least one parent who was. Some 71 percent belonged to the country’s lowest income group. Most of the country’s highest-profile rappers come from such backgrounds.Some of those rappers started their careers in the suburbs by making amateur videos known as “freeslaktish” that require little more than a camera phone and a car, or a courtyard crowded with friends. Others began making tracks in youth centers established to help young people avoid crime, said Diamant Salihu, the author of a much-discussed Swedish book published last year about the ongoing battle between two gangs, Shottaz and Death Patrol.Salihu said the Stockholm police have linked some of Sweden’s biggest rap stars, including Yasin and Jaffar Byn, to Shottaz.“As the conflict got bigger and more brutal, the rappers became more involved as they had to pick sides, and that made them targets,” Salihu added during a walk around Rinkeby, where he pointed out the sites of 10 killings since 2015, including a cafe and a pizzeria.Artists sometimes ratcheted up tensions by referencing suspected gang members and memorializing dead or jailed friends in tracks and videos, Salihu said. As in the United States, a thriving Swedish underground media ecosystem of YouTube pages, Instagram accounts and other social networks document and dissect the music, personalities and conflicts of those associated, often making stars and inflaming beefs at the same time.“This all became a spectator sport for rap fans,” Hallen said, “and people interested and drawn to and fascinated by street crime.”Salihu titled his book after a quote the artist Jaffar Byn gave to authorities after an arrest. When police asked how long the gang violence would last, he replied, “Until everyone dies.”After his kidnapping, Einar addressed his rivals even more forcefully in music and on social media.Christine Olsson/TT News Agency, via Associated PressExtortion ThreatBeyond intermittent tough-guy lyrics, Einar’s potential gang affiliations were only the subject of whispered speculation. But in March of 2020, he became a target.Authorities said later in court that the Varby Network, one of Sweden’s most notorious gangs, first intended to kidnap the teenager after a studio session that month with Yasin, who was Einar’s only competition as Sweden’s top rapper at the time.That plot failed, but around two weeks later, the group succeeded, kidnapping Einar following another studio date with the artist Haval. Einar was forced to pose for photographs, bloodied, in women’s lingerie, with a knife against his neck. The gang demanded 3 million Swedish krona (around $331,000) to stop the release of the pictures.Later, they attempted to place a bomb outside the rapper’s house to increase pressure. Einar refused to pay.Swedish police only uncovered details of the crime after gaining access to Encrochat, an encrypted phone network. After a high-profile trial, Yasin and Haval were sentenced for their roles in the plots. Both men, whose representatives declined to comment for this story, are appealing their convictions, and Yasin was released on Dec. 28, having served his sentence.Einar declined to cooperate in the trial, but his mother, Lena Nilsson, testified. In the months that followed, the young rapper addressed his rivals even more forcefully in music and on social media, with some seeing his new tracks as subliminally goading those he held responsible for his assault. On Oct. 9, Einar was arrested along with two others following a stabbing in a Stockholm restaurant. He was not charged. Less than three weeks later, on Oct. 21, he was dead.A lawyer for Einar’s family did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this article. But the musician’s mother recently addressed the debate around her son’s death on Instagram, writing, “Most of the rappers are not criminals, they are artists. They tell of a horrible reality we have in Sweden.”“I, like many mothers, lost a son in the horrible violence,” Nilsson added. “Our hearts are torn from our breasts.”‘All About the Money’With increased fan focus, political pressure and law-enforcement scrutiny now on Sweden’s rappers, many in the country are debating whether the still-young genre can change — or if it should even have to.More than a dozen local rappers and their associates approached for this article declined to be interviewed, citing fears of being stereotyped or drawing unwanted attention.But those who did speak freely said they didn’t feel any need to change what they rapped about, and not just because it reflected reality. “That’s what’s selling right now,” said the artist known as Moewgli, who collaborated with Einar on several hit singles and served prison time for robbery. “If something sells, I’m going to do it,” he said. “I’m all about the money.”Dumlee, the aspiring rapper linked to the gang Death Patrol, said politicians would soon move on. In December, he was preparing to release a track called “Bunt” that included a line aimed directly at Shottaz, Death Patrol’s rivals, with little concern for inciting further tension.Stakset — the Swedish hip-hop trailblazer and a mentor to Einar who made several tracks with the younger rapper, and now helps gang members leave crime — pointed back to the government. For decades, politicians of all stripes had been letting problems in the suburbs, including education and housing, worsen, he said.“They tried to sweep everything under the carpet,” Stakset said. But after Einar’s killing, he added, “the carpet’s not big enough.”Alex Marshall reported from Stockholm and Joe Coscarelli from New York. Nicholas Ringskog Ferrada-Noli contributed reporting from Stockholm. More

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      Abba revient après 40 ans de silence

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      The New York Times traduit une sélection de ses meilleurs articles pour un lectorat francophone. Retrouvez-les ici.STOCKHOLM – La paisible petite île de Skeppsholmen abrite une bonne partie des trésors culturels de la capitale suédoise: Moderna Museet, la troupe de théâtre Teater Galeasen et l’entrepôt de briques rouges réaménagé, à deux pas du bord de mer, où Benny Andersson a son studio personnel. Au début du mois, il a glissé dans sa bouche un paquet de snus (de la poudre de tabac consommée en Suède) tandis que Bjorn Ulvaeus sirotait un café dans l’une des salles ensoleillées; les deux musiciens entourés d’un piano à queue, d’une petite sélection de synthés et, sur le mur derrière un écran d’ordinateur, un assortiment de photographies encadrées.Pour la première fois depuis l’administration Reagan, les deux acolytes discutaient d’un nouvel album pour leur groupe, Abba — un album que l’un des plus grands groupes pop internationaux de l’histoire a réussi à réaliser en secret avec ses quatre membres historiques au complet, près de 40 ans après leur dernière représentation ensemble en public.“On a fait une pause au printemps 1982 et on a décidé que là, il était temps d’y mettre fin” a fait savoir le groupe dans un communiqué en septembre. La réponse fut tonitruante. “Abba, encore un autre vaisseau, n’est-ce pas?”. Ulvaeus jubile dans le studio, situé à quelques pas de celui, plus grand, où ils ont achevé leur album clandestin. “On a fait ce truc et on se retrouve à la une de tous les journaux du monde.”Parmi toutes les grandes figures de la pop musique que le pays a vu naître (Avicii, le créateur de tubes Max Martin, Robyn, Roxette), Abba reste la plus importante et a même son propre musée dédié. Entre 1973 et 1981, le quatuor — avec les chanteuses Agnetha Faltskog et Anni-Frid Lyngstad —a sorti huit albums studio remplis de mélodies, d’harmonies et de cordes méticuleusement agencées, qui ont généré 20 succès dans le classement des 100 plus gros titres de la semaine du magazine Billboard, vendu des dizaines de millions d’albums dans le monde et rassemblé une horde de fans passionnés.Mais son impact révolutionnaire ne se mesure pas seulement en chiffres : Le groupe était réputé pour les risques qu’il prenait avec la technologie et la diffusion de ses titres. Dès le milieu des années 1970, il a été l’un des premiers groupes à produire des mini-films promotionnels très élaborés — aujourd’hui on les appellerait des clips — dont la plupart réalisés par Lasse Hallstrom. Son album “The Visitors”, sorti en 1981, est généralement considéré comme la première sortie commerciale sur CD. En 1999, la comédie musicale “Mamma Mia !” a associé les tubes du groupe à une histoire sans aucun rapport avec les paroles. D’innombrables imitations et deux adaptations au cinéma ont suivi, dont une à laquelle on doit la mémorable performance vocale de Meryl Streep dans “Dancing Queen”.Aujourd’hui, Abba se risque à remettre en jeu peut-être son atout le plus précieux : son héritage. Pas seulement en ajoutant de nouvelles compositions à son répertoire, mais aussi en produisant un spectacle sans qu’aucun de ses membres ne soit sur scène en chair et en os. À partir de mai prochain, dans une salle londonienne construite sur mesure, le groupe se produira sous la forme d’avatars (ou, dans ce cas, d’Abbatars) ultra-sophistiqués, conçus pour reproduire leur look de 1979 — l’époque des dégradés bouffants et des costumes de scène flamboyants.Andersson et Ulvaeus dans le studio d’Andersson à Stockholm. Il s’y rend tous les jours pour travailler.Felix Odell pour The New York TimesAndersson, 74 ans, et Ulvaeus, 76 ans, deux des hommes les plus discrets dans une industrie très stressante, disent avoir été sincèrement surpris, et peut-être un peu soulagés, par l’excitation qui a accueilli l’annonce du nouvel album. (L’album de 10 titres appelé “Voyage” comme le spectacle à venir, sort le 5 novembre chez Capitol, le label du groupe).“On était loin d’imaginer que ce serait si bien accueilli” s’étonne Ulvaeus. “Quand on tente sa chance, on risque une raclée”. Difficile à dire s’il faisait intentionnellement référence à l’un des plus gros tubes d’Abba (“Take a Chance on Me” ou “Tente ta chance avec moi”): ces types ont un petit côté pince-sans-rire.Pourtant, ils auraient pu se douter que leurs retrouvailles susciteraient un grand intérêt. Depuis sa mise en veille en 1982, Abba n’a cessé de prospérer. Au fil des décennies et des mutations de la pop, le groupe a dépassé l’étiquette “Europop ringarde” qui leur collait à la peau dans les années 70 —“Nous avons vu l’ennemi dans les yeux, et c’est eux”, assurait le critique américain Robert Christgau en 1979. Abba est aujourd’hui largement respecté pour son savoir-faire pop sophistiqué, et sa popularité tenace transcende les générations et les frontières.“Abba est tout simplement l’un des plus grands groupes de l’histoire de la musique populaire”, estime Michelle Jubelirer, PDG de Capitol Music Group, dans un mail. “Ils sont véritablement un phénomène mondial, et ce depuis qu’ils ont remporté le concours Eurovision de la chanson en 1974 avec ‘Waterloo’.”Et tous les dix ans , quelque chose vient raviver cet engouement, à commencer par la compilation “Abba Gold” de 1992, qui figure toujours dans les charts britanniques plus de 1 000 semaines après sa sortie (j’avais rédigé les notes d’accompagnement de sa réédition en 2010). Les classiques du groupe et ses prouesses en studio continuent de séduire un grand éventail d’amateurs de pop, les fans d’Elvis Costello, de Carly Rae Jepsen, de Jarvis Cocker, de Kylie Minogue et de Dave Grohl. Demandez à Madonna, qui a même fait appel au groupe pour un extrait de “Gimme ! Gimme ! Gimme ! (A Man After Midnight)” pour son tube de 2005 “Hung Up”.Andersson et Ulvaeus auraient facilement pu s’asseoir sur leurs tas de couronnes suédoises, sachant leur place dans le livre des records bien assurée : “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a à prouver ?” s’exclame Andersson. “Ils joueront toujours ‘Dancing Queen’ l’année prochaine.”Ulvaeus s’esclaffe. Le duo se complète toujours parfaitement. C’est presque comique : Andersson est le musicien d’un musicien qui se rend presque tous les jours dans son studio (au volant d’une Toyota ultra-compacte). Ulvaeus, qui a toujours eu un penchant pour l’entreprenariat, mène divers projets avec sa société de production Pophouse Entertainment (et conduit une Tesla rouge).Parce qu’il n’y avait aucune pression à se retrouver, le duo affirme qu’il n’y avait pas vraiment de plan pour un album : C’est arrivé comme ça, quand quatre potes ont réalisé qu’ils aimaient toujours faire de la musique ensemble.Abba en 1979; les avatars numériques des membres du groupe seront calqués sur leurs looks de cette année-là.Sobli/RDB and ullstein bild, via Getty ImagesTout a commencé il y a environ cinq ans, lorsque Simon Fuller, le producteur à l’origine de la franchise “Idol” et des Spice Girls, a proposé de mettre en scène un spectacle de reproductions en 3D des membres du groupe qui “chanteraient” les morceaux originaux, accompagnés d’un groupe de musiciens sur scène.“C’était un choix facile (pour moi) de les pousser à être le premier groupe important à vraiment embrasser les possibilités du monde virtuel”, explique Fuller dans un mail. “La musique d’Abba séduit toutes les générations comme aucun autre groupe ne le fait depuis les Beatles.”Le projet offrait également l’avantage pratique de ne pas avoir à se soumettre à la contrainte de grands concerts.“Ce qui nous a intéressés, c’est l’idée qu’on pouvait les envoyer sur scène pendant qu’on était à la maison en train de faire la cuisine ou de promener le chien”, explique Andersson.Le duo est parti à Las Vegas découvrir l’hologramme du spectacle “Michael Jackson ONE”, et en a vite conclu qu’il lui faudrait faire environ un million de fois mieux. La société d’effets visuels Industrial Light & Magic, célèbre pour “Star Wars”, leur a garanti que c’était possible. (Fuller n’est plus impliqué dans le projet).Naturellement, “les filles”, comme sont affectueusement désignées Faltskog, 71 ans, et Lyngstad, 75 ans, dans les cercles proches du groupe, devaient être de la partie, d’autant que le processus impliquait des semaines de captation de mouvements. Elles ont dit “OK, si ça s’arrête là”, se souvient Andersson. “On ne veut pas partir en tournée. On ne veut pas d’interviews télévisées ni rencontrer de journalistes.” (Fidèles à leur parole, elles n’ont pas participé à ce reportage).Andersson et Ulvaeus décidèrent que les Abbatars devaient avoir de nouvelles chansons, comme cela aurait été le cas avant les tournées de l’époque. En 2017, Faltskog, qui vit hors de Stockholm, et Lyngstad, installée en Suisse, se sont retrouvées au studio RMV, à une centaine de mètres de chez Andersson à Skeppsholmen. Là, elles ont enregistré leurs voix sur la ballade “I Still Have Faith in You” et le titre disco riche en instruments à cordes “Don’t Shut Me Down”. Les deux chanteuses, qui avaient disparu du monde de la musique depuis des années, ont repris comme si de rien n’était.“Elles sont entrées et elles ont dit quelque chose du genre ‘On y va les gars, on peut encore y arriver’,” se rappelle Andersson. “Incroyable.”Faltskog et Lyngstad n’étaient pas les seules conviées. “Benny m’a appelé en me disant un truc comme ‘Tu peux venir au studio, on pense faire une ou deux chansons avec le vieux groupe ?’”, raconte dans un mail le guitariste Lasse Wellander, qui travaille avec le groupe depuis son album éponyme de 1975. “Au début, je n’ai pas compris ce qu’il voulait dire, puis j’ai réalisé qu’il parlait en fait d’Abba!”.Au départ, l’idée était de ne faire que ces deux morceaux, mais ils ne sont pas arrêtés là. “On s’est dit, ‘Pourquoi ne pas en écrire quelques autres, des chansons, juste pour se faire plaisir?,” raconte Andersson. Et les filles ont dit : “Oui, ce sera amusant”. Alors elles sont revenues et on a eu cinq chansons. Et on s’est dit : “On ne devrait pas en faire quelques unes de plus? On pourrait sortir un album.”Il y a eu pas mal de discussions autour de la place qu’aurait un nouvel album dans une discographie déjà si appréciée. “Une partie de la question était, est-ce que cela va nuire à l’histoire d’Abba, à la musique d’Abba”, raconte Gorel Hanser, qui travaille avec les membres du groupe depuis 1969, avant même qu’ils ne s’appellent Abba, et qui fait partie intégrante de son équipe de direction. Elle trouve qu’Andersson avait eu les mêmes préoccupations quand l’idée de “Mamma Mia !” avait fait jour : “Est-ce que c’est la bonne façon de faire ? Est-ce qu’on risque de détruire ce qu’on a ?”, continue-t-elle. “Mais je pense qu’on s’y est très bien pris. On ne néglige rien qui ne puisse être amélioré.”La préparation du spectacle en scène nécessite des heures d’enregistrement dans des costumes capteurs de mouvement.via ABBADans les nouveaux titres, on trouve certains des textes les plus poétiquement doux-amers d’Ulvaeus, sur la difficulté des relations et des séparations. “Je suis moi-même passé par là”, dit-il. “C’est de la fiction mais on sait exactement de quoi on parle.”Pour Andersson, composer à nouveau pour Abba a été un changement bienvenu. “Je trouve que c’est un peu ennuyeux de ne travailler que sur le recyclage”, estime-t-il, ce qui déclenche un vif échange avec Ulvaeus — leur seul désaccord de la journée — sur son choix de mots.“Tu appelles ça du recyclage, j’appelle ça de la narration transcendante”, rétorque Ulvaeus. “Tu peux envoyer, tu peux faire des trucs sur d’autres plateformes, et ”Voyage” c’est ça : ça raconte une histoire sur une autre plateforme. ‘Mamma Mia!’ c’est ça aussi”, ajoute-t-il à propos de la comédie musicale. “Ce n’est pas du recyclage.”D’une certaine manière, l’échange est du pur Abba : décontracté, mais sous-tendu de préoccupations sérieuses. Un peu plus tard, les deux hommes se reprennent à débattre, cette fois à propos de leurs Abbatars. Andersson fait remarquer qu’Ulvaeus a demandé une modification de la chevelure de son alter ego numérique parce qu’il y a une limite à ce que l’on peut accepter de la réalité de 1979. Je lui fait observer que c’est une excellente façon de réécrire un peu l’histoire en restant fidèle à son esprit. Ulvaeus répond, avec un léger sourire, “Oui, c’est une question existentielle très intéressante”. (Ulvaeus, connu en Suède pour son engagement en faveur de l’athéisme et de l’humanisme, apprécie ce genre de questions; plus tard, il me demande : “Dites-moi, est-ce que vous pensez que la constitution américaine est assez solide pour résister à un nouveau président républicain ?”)L’écriture à deux par Andersson et Ulvaeus a résisté aux divorces et aux critiques méprisantes (Un petit rappel : Andersson a été marié à Lyngstad, Ulvaeus à Faltskog). Ils composent ensemble non-stop depuis leur rencontre en 1966, et leur collaboration a continué après Abba, non seulement pour le groupe d’Andersson, mais aussi pour les comédies musicales “Chess” et “Kristina from Duvemåla” — une épopée sur les immigrants suédois du 19ème siècle en Amérique, qui comporte un moment inoubliable sur les poux.S’ils se partageaient le travail de manière assez fluide dans les années 1970, la répartition des tâches est aujourd’hui beaucoup plus précise : Andersson trouve des mélodies et enregistre des démos dans son repère de Skeppsholmen; il les envoie ensuite à Ulvaeus, qui écrit les paroles. Quand on lui demande où en sont ces démos, Andersson propose de jouer “Don’t Shut Me Down” et se tourne vers son ordinateur. Il ne la trouve pas parmi ses dizaines de fichiers, et cherche avec les mots “Tina Charles” — car la chanson d’Abba a une élégance ondoyante qui rappelle les tubes de la chanteuse britannique.Il finit par dénicher non pas la démo, mais la partie instrumentale finie, et la fait entendre sur l’impeccable sound system. La preuve est faite de l’importance cruciale des voix de Faltskog et Lyngstad dans la tapisserie sonore d’Abba.“Tous les groupes connus depuis les années 70 comptaient plus qu’un seul chanteur”, rappelle Andersson, citant Eagles, Fleetwood Mac et Abba. “Vous entendez Frida chanter un morceau, et après vous entendez Agnetha chanter — c’est comme si c’était deux groupes. Le fait qu’il y ait deux chanteuses, ça aide incroyablement la dynamique. Et alors quand elles chantent ensemble…”Dans les harmonies de “Voyage”, on reconnaît indéniablement la patte d’Abba, même si le registre est un peu plus grave que par le passé. L’âge ne suffit pas à expliquer cette différence : “Pour la plupart des morceaux, on les forçait un peu à monter aussi haut que possible, parce que ça donne de l’énergie,” raconte Andersson.“On les incitait, plutôt que forçait”, corrige Ulvaeus.La pop a beaucoup changé en 40 ans, mais “Voyage” ne cherche pas à ressembler à autre chose qu’à du Abba. “Vous écoutez les nouveaux albums, c’est toujours tellement lisse”, regrette Andersson. “Il n’y a rien qui bouge à part le rythme exact. Moi je ne fais pas ça — je le fais à main levée.”Cette approche contribue à donner au nouvel album un côté intemporel. “De nos jours, on peut tout éditer, mais eux ne l’ont pas fait”, nous dit le batteur Per Lindvall, joint par téléphone, qui collabore avec Andersson et Ulvaeus depuis le tube de 1980 “Super Trouper”, et a participé au nouvel album. “Et en plus, ils n’en on pas fait des tonnes sur les voix. C’est ce qui fait ce son unique d’Abba.”Abba en studio, travaillant sur “Voyage”.Ludvig AnderssonPour le nouveau spectacle, en revanche — dans lequel les deux hommes ont investi “une blinde”, selon Andersson, dont le fils Ludvig en est l’un des producteurs — il leur a fallu recourir à davantage de technologie du 21ème siècle, notamment cinq semaines de capture de mouvements. Il leur a fallu se serrer dans des combinaisons moulantes couvertes de capteurs, et Andersson et Ulvaeus ont dû raser leurs barbes chéries.Alors que les différentes pièces de “Voyage” prenaient forme ces deux dernières années, l’ancien leader des Klaxons James Righton a été engagé pour recruter les musiciens pour le live des Abbatars. Parmi ses 10 membres, on compte Victoria Hesketh, 37 ans, dont le nom de scène est Little Boots. Début 2020, elle a répété avec le nouvel ensemble à Stockholm sous la tutelle d’Andersson.Il y a 40 ans, un parcours aussi long et improbable aurait été inimaginable pour quatre Suédois. “Vous devez comprendre à quel point il paraissait impossible avant Abba de percer en Angleterre ou aux États-Unis”, dit Ulvaeus de la scène pop avant la mondialisation rendue possible par internet. “Ce n’était absolument pas plausible”.Pourtant, non seulement Abba a ouvert la voie pour des musiciens du monde entier, mais il l’a fait avec un pragmatisme d’artisans — ce que ses membres restent au fond d’eux-mêmes. “Le fait est que, même à l’époque, ça a toujours été un boulot de tous les jours”, dit Andersson. “On écrivait les chansons, on espérait que quelque chose de bon en sortirait, on se retrouvait au studio, on les enregistrait. Et on se remettait à écrire. C’était exactement pareil qu’aujourd’hui : c’est juste une question d’essayer de trouver quelque chose qui marche, et de voir ce qui se passe.” More

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      ‘Knocking’ Review: Domestic Disturbances

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      A character’s suspicions about a mysterious tapping noise turn into a thriller about the horrors of isolation.Grief has left Molly (Cecilia Milocco) in a fragile state in “Knocking,” a new psychological thriller from Sweden by the director Frida Kempff.After losing her lover in a tragic event at a beach, Molly spent time in a psychiatric ward, and her recovery in her new apartment is touch-and-go. Kempff spins Molly’s suspicions about a mysterious tapping noise into an insistent entry in the horrors of breakdown and isolation.Molly lives alone but her real solitude comes from having neighbors and a superintendent who look at her funny when she asks about the noises in the building. There’s a kindly grocer and a sympathetic police officer, but otherwise Molly is portrayed as living in a mental hellscape: First a depressive stultifying stillness, her curtains drawn and house cluttered, and then a panicked spiral played up with canted angles, tinted lighting and vertiginous camerawork (care of the Snorricam, a rig mounted directly on the actor).Pulling off this claustrophobic level of immersion requires better orchestration than Kempff’s drawn-out buildup. “Knocking” unnerves more when landing on singular imagery: a bird scrambling for footing on a metal railing, or, in one wild shot, blood droplets on a cellphone screen showing a yowling fox. Milocco’s face is a sea of balled-up tension but it’s tough for her to sustain this perpetually disbelieved character within a confining screenplay that retreads its beats.What could be described as a story about gaslighting is complicated by the liberal use of eccentric camera perspectives that seem less aligned with expressing Molly’s distress than with pushing suspense. The film does strike one long, nerve-jangling note, but the style leaves Molly with nowhere to run.KnockingNot rated. In Swedish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      A Movie Festival for One, on a Tiny Nordic Island

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Movie Festival for One, on a Tiny Nordic IslandSweden’s Goteborg Film Festival has taken social distancing to the extreme, offering one attendee a week on a barren island, with only the competition films for company.Lisa Enroth, an emergency nurse, will spend a week in an isolated lighthouse keeper’s cottage, watching the 70 movies in competition at the Goteborg Film Festival.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021As they do at the opening of any star-studded film festival, photographers scrambled for position, training their lenses on the spot where audience members would alight. But when the first — and only — guest of honor arrived, she was clad not in a tuxedo or sparkly gown, but in jeans and an orange puffer jacket (designer unknown). There was no red carpet beneath her feet, only bare frozen ground. And instead of sauntering into a plush cinema buzzing with celebrities, she climbed into a speedboat and zipped off across the frigid water to a tiny island where she would settle in for the first premiere.As festivals around the world grapple with the pandemic, the Goteborg Film Festival, which opened in Sweden’s second largest city on Jan. 29, hasn’t so much accepted social distancing as escalated it. Over the course of the coming week, it will hold screenings in two urban venues for just one festival attendee. And it has also sent a single viewer to a tiny, barren island in the North Atlantic to watch the 70 films in competition — alone.Hamneskar, a rocky outcrop some 25 miles from Goteborg, was nicknamed Pater Noster by sailors who would recite the Lord’s Prayer as they neared its treacherous waters.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesSome festivals, like Venice’s in September, have faced the pandemic as diminished versions of their normally glitzy selves, with alternately seated theaters and mandatory temperature checks. Others, like Sundance and the Berlinale, now pushed until March 2021, have gone entirely digital, offering streaming access to films and other events. Some organizers are postponing their festivals, crossing their fingers that further down the line pandemic regulations will allow for a more usual festival experience: On Jan. 27, the Cannes festival announced that it would take place in July, rather than its customary May.But at Goteborg, the Nordic countries’ most important festival, organizers have made an unusual virtue of necessity. “So many people who have been home alone, unable to meet friends or family, have turned to cinema for company and comfort,” said the festival’s artistic director, Jonas Holmberg. “We wanted to experiment with that, to isolate that feeling, and take it to the extreme. So we thought, ‘Why don’t we isolate the person on a small island with nothing but films?’”As the only country in Europe to resist a formal lockdown, Sweden has followed its own path through the pandemic, neither recommending mask use nor shutting down schools until December, when a disproportionately high mortality rate from the disease forced it to change strategy.But much of the country has complied with guidelines issued by the government, and after months of even voluntary social distancing and lockdowns, a wintry week alone on an island with only movies for company might seem the last thing most people would need. Yet when an evocative online video announced the contest, over 12,000 people applied for the solo experience. On Jan. 19, the festival selected Lisa Enroth, a 41-year-old emergency nurse from the town of Skovde, in southern Sweden, as the winner.Some of the films Lisa Enroth will have the opportunity to see while on Pater Noster, from left: “Tove,” “Conference” (a film from the Social Distances section), “The Conversations of Donkey and Rabbit” (a short film from the Lockdown Cinema section), “Pleasure,” “Incredible Thoughts of a Woman on a Tier” (a short film from the Lockdown Cinema section) and “Another Round.”Credit…via Goteborg Film Festival Like health care workers everywhere, Enroth has found the past several months stressful. “Every day at the hospital we’ve been dealing with so much,” she said. “With all the patients, and all the new protocols, I’ve never felt so unisolated in my life.”So when she saw the video’s call for applications, she didn’t hesitate. “Alone in nature, on an island? Plus movies? I was like, ‘Yes, I need this.’”The hospital agreed to give Enroth time off (“My boss is a movie buff,” she explained) and on Jan. 30, a boat brought her to Hamneskar, a rocky outcrop some 25 miles from Goteborg that was nicknamed Pater Noster by sailors who would recite the Lord’s Prayer as they neared its treacherous waters. There, she took up residence in the former keeper’s cottage that sits aside the island’s cast-iron lighthouse, and settled in for the movie marathon.During her time on Pater Noster, Enroth will have access to the 70 films screening at the festival, which include the Finnish Oscar contender “Tove,” Thomas Vinterberg’s acclaimed “Another Round” and the Goteborg native Ninja Thyberg’s “Pleasure,” all of which are competing for best Nordic film. International films in competition include Emma Dante’s “The Macaluso Sisters,” set in Sicily, and Charlène Favier’s “Slalom,” about elite downhill skiers abused by their coach. There is also a separate section, called Social Distances, featuring films created in response to the pandemic, and one called Lockdown Cinema for short films made in quarantine.Streamed through the festival’s website and available to the public, all of the films have scheduled premiere times online. But a handful of viewers are also having their own unusually isolated encounters with them. Coinciding with each online premiere, the films will also screen at Goteborg’s Draken movie theater (capacity 708) and the Scandinavium arena (whose 12,000 seats normally host concert goers or hockey fans) for a single viewer who has won a seat through a raffle.A screening for one (in this case, Lova Lakso) at the Draken movie theater in Goteborg.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesAt each venue a red carpet leads the viewer to the assigned seat. And although popcorn is not available, other enjoyments may be. “In some cases,” hints the festival director Holmberg, “it may be possible the filmmaker will be there to present the film.”By staging one-person viewings in iconic locations, Holmberg hopes to preserve some of the sense of occasion that an in-person festival generates. But here again, the festival organizers are experimenting. “We want to see, how does being alone affect the film experience? What happens when you’re doing nothing besides watching the film?” he said.Although she will post a daily video diary on a dedicated page of the festival website, Enroth has agreed to eschew all other forms of communication and entertainment — no phone, no books — during her time on Pater Noster. She said that she wasn’t worried about getting lonely, but didn’t rule out the possibility she may “start talking to the furniture.” And, like Holmberg, she was also interested to see how her week on the island changes the experience of watching films. “The first day, it’s just ‘Oh, I’m alone, watching a movie.’ But a few days in, I might be like, ‘OK, these people are my only company. What if I hate them?’” she said.But for the self-professed science fiction fan (her favorite movie is “The Never Ending Story”), even that will be a welcome escape. “I love watching movies, because it makes me let go of work and everything else that’s going on right now,” Enroth said. “It’ll be great to be surrounded by someone else’s reality.”“Alone in nature, on an island? Plus movies?” said Enroth. “I was like, ‘Yes, I need this.’”Credit…Erik Nissen JohansenAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More