The Cinematheque

“This isn’t a film in thrall to star power, or indeed any cinematic bells and whistles … Devoted fans of Jansson will be delighted that her delicately personal work hasn’t been punched up.”

Guy Lodge, Variety

Novelist, painter, and children’s book writer and illustrator Tove Jansson could hardly have predicted the sub-industry that has sprung up around her work, encompassing major exhibitions, biographical treatments, and now an international co-production of a book she wrote as a personal, intimate, and even reclusive correspondence. Charlie McDowell, the American director of high-concept films like The One I Love and Windfall, earned the approval of Jansson’s niece Sophia to helm the project. Glenn Close plays the sage and inquisitive grandmother, full of flinty appreciation for nature’s wisdom, to the film’s version of Sophia (Emily Matthews), a child who’s given the space to grow over a Nordic island summer. Anders Danielsen Lie (Bergman Island, The Worst Person in the World) rounds out the cast as Sophia’s father.

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