TURIST
FORCE MAJEURE
Ruben Östlund / Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden / 2014 / 120 min / Colour
A quiet Swedish family spends their winter holidays in a cabin in the French Alps, but the serenity of their stay is suddenly shattered by a massive avalanche. While Ebba, the mother, instinctively tries to protect her children, their father Tomas instinctively runs away, carrying only his gloves and iPhone and abandoning his wife and children. The avalanche stops a few meters away, but this event will deeply shake the family dynamics. Ruben Östlund directs a family drama with Bergmanian references, critically acclaimed for its original structure: the events are reported in the form of a diary to show the gradual changes of the characters day after day, with an objective and detached eye that heralds an inevitable disintegration. The "force majeure" is not only the destructive energy inherent in the potential of nature, but also the urge to survive in dangerous conditions, where the boundaries between selfishness and self-preservation are very blurred.
Ruben Östlund
Ruben Östlund (1974) is a Swedish director. In 2004 his film The Guitar Mongoloid won an award at the Moscow International Film Festival. The short film, Incident by a Bank (2009), won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Grand Prix at the Tampere Film Festival. In 2008 he directed Involuntary and in 2011, Play. In 2014 his film Force Majeure was awarded a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2017 and 2022 he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, respectively for The Square and Triangle of Sadness.
Credits
Screenplay Ruben ÖstlundCinematography Fredrik WenzelEditing Jacob Secher SchulsingerMusic Ola FløttumProduction company Plattform Produktion