And the king said, what a Fantastic Machine! by Gothenburg-based Axel Danielsson and Maximilien Van Aertryck and Mexican director David Zonana’s film Heroico are selected for the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah, USA in January. Both are co-produced with Film i Väst.
And the king said, what a Fantastic Machine! is about man’s relationship to the camera, with implications in its two-hundred-year history up to the present day. The film focuses on how the camera has been used, what choices it makes people make and how this affects both human behavior and society as a whole. The film is mostly made with archival material, both older material and YouTube clips – everything from the very first photograph of a human, to today’s uninterrupted live streams.
Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck are directors, screenwriters, producers and editors, associated with Plattform Produktion in Gothenburg. Ten Meter Tower (2016) has been shown at more than a hundred international film festivals and won, among other things, the Jury’s Special Prize and the Audience Prize in Clermont-Ferrand, and Startsladden at the Gothenburg Film Festival. It was also shortlisted for an Oscar in 2018 and nominated for an Emmy.
Studio 5 (2017) Guldbagge- nominated for Best Short Film. The duo’s previous film Arbete åt alla! (2021) had its world premiere at the Canadian festival Hot Docs and was awarded the Audience Award in the Lab Competition in Clermont-Ferrand. Ten Meter Tower and Studio 5 are co-produced with Film i Väst.
Santiago Sandoval Carbajal appears in Heroic by David Zonana, an official selection of the World Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
David Zonana’s film Heroico is about Luis, an 18-year-old indigenous boy who enrolls in the Heroic Military College with hopes of a better future. There he encounters a rigid and institutionally violent system whose purpose is to break him down into a perfect soldier.
David Zonana is a director and producer, based in Mexico. His debut film, Workforce, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and was selected for the San Sebastian Film Festival. It became the most internationally awarded Mexican film of 2019. Heroico is David Zonana’s second feature film. Heroico is produced by Teorma with Gothenburg-based Jonas Kellagher, Commonground Pictures, as Swedish co-producer alongside Film i Väst. Parts of the post production have been done by Cloudberry.
