MOVIE OF THE WEEK August 23, 2024: PARADISE IS BURNING
With powerful performances from its young stars and a moving message about the need for connection in a chaotic, undependable world, Mika Gustafson’s engrossing, realistic drama Paradise Is Burning tells the story of three sisters hoping to get by on their own while flying under the radar of the Swedish social services system. But as life tries to force them to grow up too quickly, they also strive to find moments of joy.
Sixteen-year-old Laura (Bianca Delbravo) is working hard to keep things together for her younger sisters Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and Steffi (Safira Mossberg) in their unreliable mother’s absence; it’s clear this isn’t the first time their mom has been gone, but it might be the longest. Laura knows that if anyone official finds out that the girls are living on their own, they’ll likely be split up and put into foster care. So she does what she has to, from stealing laundry detergent and food to turning in forged school-absence notes. But when an in-person home visit becomes inevitable, she must figure out what to do next.
Simultaneously, Laura desperately needs to escape the responsibility weighing on her, even if only for moments at a time. So she breaks into unoccupied houses — sometimes with a group of friends so they can have a spontaneous pool party, sometimes on her own so she can pretend she lives a different life. Her adventures appeal to Hanna (Ida Engvoll), an adult whom Laura unexpectedly befriends and who appears to be going through her own personal crisis. Laura thinks Hanna might be the answer to her problems, but nothing is simple in this story, and tricky situations don’t have neat, cinematic resolutions. Meanwhile, both Mira and Steffi grapple with the family’s lack of stability in their own ways, with Mira unexpectedly befriending a man who has karaoke ambitions, and Steffi barely avoiding serious consequences when she wanders, free-range, around the neighborhood.
Through it all, the girls’ love for each other is what grounds them — that, and the group of girlfriends that surrounds them for milestones like Mira’s first period and Steffi’s tooth loss. The sisters’ moments of celebration and fun with their friends are some of the movie’s most buoyant, and they speak to the power of finding your people. Gustafson — who also co-wrote the script with Alexander Öhrstrand — captures it all with authentic grit, eliciting lovely performances from the three girls and raising thoughtful questions about a society that would let them fall through the cracks in the first place. — Betsy Bozdech
Team #MOTW’s comments:
Pam Grady: Life is not easy for three Swedish sisters. Mom is long gone, leaving 16-year-old Laura to parent 12-year-old Mira and seven-year-old Steffi. The freezer is broken and there’s no money for groceries so family shoplifting outings are a thing. And in their friend group, breaking into houses is something done for kicks. So when social services calls and announces they are going to make a home visit and need to meet with the girl’s mother, Laura goes into overdrive to find someone to be an impersonator. Meeting middle-class Hanna seems like the answer to a prayer, especially when the woman is so fascinated by Laura’s criminal adventures. The irony that Hanna herself is a checked out mom, not so different from her own is lost on the desperate girl. Documentarian Mika Gustafson makes an assured debut in a film that often unreels like cinema verite. But the drama’s greatest strength is its characters, particularly Laura as actor Bianca Delbravo in her first feature offers a nuanced portrayal of a teen in a desperate situation trying hard and flailing at adulting.
Nell Minow: Paradise is Burning takes us so believably into the lives of three well-intentioned but almost feral sisters that we almost reach out to hug them. The trust she had to create with her young actresses in order to get performances so unaffected it feels like we are watching real life as it unfolds.
Sherin Nicole Paradise is Burning is a garden of wildflowers. Left untended, three sisters grow up feral, fierce, and fragile. Within the circle of their love and reliance on one other, the three become substitutes for their own mother. Each of them contributing something to the growth of the whole. Laura, Mira, and Steffi are free, but it isn’t forever. At the edges of their delicate ruse, a social worker is knocking on the garden gate. Triggering the looming sense it will all come burning down. Until then we worry for and live vicariously through them. That is the movie’s strength, the pull of one last fling of freedom at the end of youth, the dangers of adulthood, and the precipice of reality.
Leslie Combemale Paradise is Burning captures the best and worst of sibling sisterhood to such a stunning degree that it deserves a place as a summer cult classic. It has, from beginning to end, a sort of authentic quality that could only come with a film co-written by a woman and with women all the way up and down the line, from Mika Gustafson’s direction to the impeccable performances, to Sine Vadstrup Brooker’s cinematography and Catherina Nyqvist Ehrnrooth’s production design. It feels written especially for sisters, both born and chosen. So many around the world can relate to the aspects of the film that center on being at risk or needing to become an adult before their time. No wonder it’s cleaning up the awards on the film festival circuit. See it if and when you can.
Jennifer Merin Swedish director/co-writer Mika Gustafson’s incendiary drama is about Laura, Steffi and Mira — three sisters ranging in age from seven to 16 — whose mother abandons them for long stretches of time. The film takes place during one of those stretches of time. Laura, Steffi and Mira are thoroughly believable and tremendously compelling characters. Performances by the three young actresses who portray the girls are flawless. Their story and arc elicit empathy. the film reminds us that even first world countries — like Sweden — that proudly credit themselves as and are considered to be economically privileged and socially conscious welfare democracies, have underprivileged citizens who struggle to keep from falling between the ever increasing cracks. Read full review.
Loren King The Swedish film Paradise is Burning is the affecting feature debut of Mika Gustafson whose previous work was in documentaries. With echoes of filmmaker Linda Olte’s Sisters, about multiple generations of young women and children caught up in Latvia’s foster system, “Paradise is Burning” is a raw, heartfelt and naturalistic portrait of three girls mysteriously abandoned by their parents who form intense bonds as they seek comfort and struggle to survive on their own. Like the stray dogs who roam the rural neighborhood, 16-year-old Laura (Bianca Delbravo); 12-year-old Mira (Dilvin Asaad); and 6-year-old Steffi (Safira Mossberg) steal food, party with other unsupervised girls in the woods, and sleep nestled close to one another as if in a pack. Laura has assumed the role of head of the household, through she’s ill-equipped for it, and wrestles with how to deal with an impending home visit from social services. She hides this from her younger sisters, also burying her fears that the siblings will be taken away and separated. Seeking to escape, or perhaps yearning for a maternal figure, Laura befriends an older woman neighbor, Hannah (Ida Engvoll), with an unsurprising troubling outcome. All three young actresses deliver luminous, authentic performances. But it’s Delbravo who’s the breakout here, revealing a teenager’s bravado and vulnerability in this alternately tender and scathing study of innocence and neglect.
Sandie Angulo Chen: Paradise Is Burning is a powerful family drama focused on three working-class Swedish sisters whose mother has abandoned them for an indeterminate amount of time. The girls — Laura, 16, Mira, 12, and Steffi, 7 — are left alone in their public housing home for the summer, but their carefree summer turns fraught when Laura receives a phone call from child protective services that they’re scheduling a home visit and expect to meet their mother. Laura, played by Bianca Delbravo, knows she must find someone to impersonate their mother or she and her younger sisters will be separated. Director and co-writer Mika Gustafson cast non-actors for the three sisters, and the result is a naturalistic, affecting story about sisterhood and survival.
Nikki Fowler: Swedish director/co-writer Mika Gustafson‘s Paradise is Burning is a moving coming of age look at three young sisters abandoned at home periodically by their mother. Laura, the eldest at 16, tries to hold her family together with risky yet clever ways to keep them all safe and fed. While dodging calls from social services and engaging in truancy and other frowned upon adolescent habits like dabbling in drinking, smoking and occasionally breaking and entering to jump in a swimming pool, the three girls find a new normal without the guidance of a parent at home while engaging with their peers and adults who blindly look away. Laura miraculously slips into a role as ‘mother’ but it’s an unnatural one when all three sisters are still growing and discovering their youth. Paradise is Burning shares a glimpse into a world with a “not in my backyard” or “not my problem” mentality, in this drama based on a first world countries’ unraveling poverty and the cracks that have riddled out of control. The film is suspenseful and emotionally moving as you flow up and down with the decisions these young girls make to survive. The music, cinematography and performances by these young actors are all equally amazing.
Cate Marquis Swedish director/co-writer Mika Gustafson’s drama PARADISE IS BURNING, about three young sisters on their own in in Swedish working-class suburbia, shows that it is possible for children to fall between the cracks even in a country with a high-level of social services like Sweden. After the latest disappearance of their unreliable mother months ago, 16-year-old Laura (Bianca Delbravo) has taken on the role of parent to her sisters, 12-year-old Mir a (Dilvin Asaad) and 7-year-old Steffi (Safira Mossberg). Read full review.
FILM DETAILS:
Title: Paradise is Burning
Director: Mika Gustafson
Release Date: August 23, 2024
Running Time: 108 minutes
Language: Swedish with English subtitles
Screenwriters: Mika Gustafson and Alexander Öhrstrand
Lead Performers: Bianca Delbravo, Dilvin Asaad, Safira Mossberg
Distribution Company: Room 8 Films
AWFJ Movie of the Week Panel Members: Sandie Angulo Chen, Betsy Bozdech, Leslie Combemale, Nikki Fowler, Pam Grady, Loren King, Cate Marquis, Jennifer Merin, Nell Minow, Sherin Nicole, Liz Whittemore
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Edited by Jennifer Merin
