Paradise Is Burning

“A declaration of love to sisterhood,” according to director Mika Gustafson, Paradise is Burning won the top prize at the Swedish Film Awards in January. The sisters here are young—Laura (16), Mira (12), and Steffi (7)—but forced to get on with things by the absence of their unreliable mother. Over a long hot summer they embrace their freedom, until the day that social services call for a meeting. Laura befriends an older woman and hopes to ask her to impersonate their mom. But as the moment of truth draws closer, new tensions arise, forcing the three sisters to negotiate the fine line between the euphoria of total freedom and the harsh realities of growing up.

Paradise Is Burning exudes joy, but also a sense of imminent collapse — and decidedly no cuteness.

Jonathan Romney, Financial Times

It’s not hard to spot the influences that consciously or not infuse the work, from Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and The Bling Ring (with their lolling sisters and girl-gang antics respectively), to Andrea Arnold’s studies of lost or neglected adolescents (Fish Tank, American Honey) and the tender social realism of Hirokazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows, Shoplifters)… but the whole is fresh, directional and beautifully cut.

Leslie Felperin, The Guardian

Chaotic and intimate, Gustafson captures the balancing act of sisterhood which at once encompasses brutality and tenderness.

Grace Dodd, Little White Lies