Screening: The Strait Trilogy and conversation with the artists behind the film, Matilda Tjäder & Asta Lynge. Moderator: Matthew Post, curator of the exhibition Drain the Öresund.

Om filmen

The Strait Trilogy is a Nordic Noir that tells the story of a portal located somewhere in the strait between Denmark and Sweden.

During the warmest summer on record in the region of Øresund, an array of strange events unfold; swimmers and kite surfers from the coastlines of the strait go missing whilst debris of personal belongings wash up on the shorelines. The Lynnetteholm Project – a large-scale expansion scheme of the city of Copenhagen is suspended and the artificial island promised to put an end to the housing crisis is postponed indefinitely. Amid rising tensions and the sudden closure of the Øresund Bridge – “the backbone of the region” – a geological survey is published and conspiracies of a supernatural force somewhere in the strait proliferate. Two independent investigators emerge to navigate the locals’ stories. As they start to trace and map testimonies and forensic evidence, everything seems to point towards a portal that has reopened after centuries of closure.

In the wreckage of the supposedly permanent landscape new doors and theories around the region open up. The more they dig, the deeper the portal becomes – and as they start to join the dots, the darker the plot gets. On their journey through space-time they meet powerful characters from the local cultural canon such as internationally known stars Zlatan Ibrahimović and Arne Jacobsen – as well as other characters lesser known to the public eye. What all of them share is their interface with the portal and the consequences of having interfaced with it. As the plot thickens, they start asking themselves if there’s actually someone controlling the narrative, or even writing and editing it in real time? Are they themselves characters in someone else’s Nordic Noir?

What was it with this place that had inspired myriad writers to journey through its darkness and shadows? Was it the landscape and latitude that invited projections beyond the horizon of the imaginable? The uncanny perfection of the “minimalist” design? Or was it perhaps the heart shaped mirror of the welfare state that at an honest glance fell from its thin nail onto the ground – shattering into pieces so sharp no one would walk away without a wound?
 

Film facts
Director: Asta Lynge & Matilda Tjäder     
Country: Danmark & Sverige
Year: 2020-2023
Length: 59:59 min
Language: Swedish, Danish, English

Featuring:
Jonas Bergen Rahmanzadeh, Mai Brostrøm, Sunjatha Conta, Samuel Hatchwell, Hans Frederik Jacobsen, Asta Lynge, Claus Lynge, Mood, Farhaan Mumtaz, Anna Paterson, Sara Sjölin, Louis Scherfig, Tora Schultz, Emilia Thorin, Matilda Tjäder, Beth von Undall.

Image: Jakob Ohrt
Script, direction, edit and production: Asta Lynge & Matilda Tjäder
Costume: Sanna Helena Berger
Soundtrack: Fivestarrockstar
Poster design: Anna Sagström