Shot in the name of Love: an interview with David Färdmar

Often short but rarely sweet, the works of Swedish film-maker, David Färdmar’s has resonated with audiences – especially those in the LGBTI community – around the world.

David recently took some time out to reflect on his remarkable career in film with us.

Your short film, My Name Is Love, found its way to 70 festivals and is still being screened today. We can’t talk too much about the film without giving away its ending, but can you tell us where the idea came from, and how it feels that it’s reached such a wide audience?

The film is based on a true story, about a friend of mine who had been in kind of the same situation as the main character Love, so I made it originally for my friend, to encourage him to report the sexual assault he had been through some years ago.

At almost every festival I’ve been to someone comes up to me after the screening and share their own personal story with me, and say: “Thank you for doing this film”, so I’m very honoured and humbled. I never in my wildest dreams could ever imagine that a 20 minutes zero-budget short film from little Gothenburg, Sweden could have such an impact on film audiences all over the world, and actually help some, which was my initial intention.

 

Apart from Fucking Amal (aka Show Me Love), I can’t think of any Swedish queer cinema that has had such a wide reach. Is there still a lot of queer cinema coming out of Sweden that the rest of us don’t know about?

I think we have a pretty good queer cinema on the uprise here in Sweden, but we really could and should be able to do a lot more I think. Patrik age 1,5, Kiss Me and the latest one, Girls Lost are at least three successful feature films I can think of right now on the top of my head. And we do have some other really interesting short film-makers here in Sweden that are doing pretty well. But, it’s a lot of hard work getting the films out there

Your association with actor Adam Lundgren, who recently starred in Blue Eyes, goes back a long way. What was it like to work with him? You must be proud that his acting career has flourished.

The first time I met Adam Lundgren he was around 17 years old, and I saw a young aspiring actor, little rough around the edges, but with great potential and a hunger for acting.

When I finally got a break during casting projects to direct my own short film My Name Is Love I was very happy when Adam said yes to play the leading role as Love, despite the very difficult part and topic of the film.

It’s always a true honour to work with Adam and every time I see him in a film or at TV I can’t help but feeling a bit proud of him and I’m very happy that his career is going so good.

Your most recent work was the short film, We Could Be Parents. What do you enjoy most about making short films?

I love the whole process, both as a director, screenwriter and producer. Mostly as a director though. I really like the challenge of telling the essence of a story, maybe only in 10-20 minutes, but to be able to tell about a completely new subject or topic and telling it with a new angle to it, and invite the audience to this whole new world and life of the characters, but very focused and sharp cause of the few minutes we have to tell it all. It’s so much harder to make a really good short film than a good feature film, we don’t have 90 minutes to tell our story, we might just have nine minutes.

My Scandinavia: David’s favourite places

At the risk of being to subjective and obvious, it’s got to be my hometown Göteborg. It’s a big city, but not too big, you can always run in to friends on the streets. We have close to both the water and the city town, and you can walk almost everywhere or take the local trams. And the people are very friendly here. I do like both our capital, Stockholm, and Malmö down in the south of Sweden, but for me Göteborg is where my heart is.