THE SLINGSHOT

Swedish director Ake Sandgren has created an enormously sophisticated and vividly realistic portrait of a young man coming of age in 1920's Stockholm. Ten-year-old Roland is the son of a Russian Jewish mother and Swedish Socialist father, and as such encounters the extreme prejudice and disdain of a society which regards his father's bolshevism as treason and his mother's religion as blasphemy. The anti-Semitism of the day was part of the established order, and growing up an outsider preordained a life of struggle. But Roland is not a passive victim. Instead he has a resililent spirit and a fierce combativeness which at times lead him to confront authority, as well as fuel his entrepreneurial spirit. The film's title refers to a scheme in which Roland fashions slingshots from the illegal prophylactics his mother proffers to working-class neighbors as part of the family's political organizing. Ultimately triumphant and emotionally fulfilling, THE SLINGSHOT is a lyrical image of childhood full of tragedy, farce, heartbreak, and exhilaration. – Sundance Film Festival. In Swedish with English subtitles.