‘Force Majeure’ Producer Kjellson and Katja Wik Launch Production Shingle (EXCLUSIVE)
GOTEBORG — ‘Force Majeure’ producer Marie Kjellson, a former exec at leading Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Plattform Produktion, has teamed with director Katja Wik to launch production shingle Kjellson & Wik. They will unveil the Wik-directed “The Ex-Wife,” currently in post-production and one of the company’s earliest productions, at Sweden’s Goteborg Festival, which kicks off Friday Jan. 29.
Originally an editor – on such films as Swedish directors Jonas Jonason’s “News in the Archipelago” and Stefan Jarl’s ”The Girl from Auschwitz” – Swedish producer Kjellson was signed up by Goteborg-based production shingle Plattform Produktion in 2004. She was later joined by casting director Wik. For the next eight years they worked together on all the company’s productions. Over 2012-13, Kjellson served as Plattform CEO. She ended up producing Swedish director/Plattform founder Ostlund’s “Force Majeure” (aka “Tourist) which scored a 2015 best foreign-language film Golden Globe nomination. Kjellson had already served as a line producer on his “Play,” “Involuntary” and “Weekend.”
“The line producer position sort of stuck to me within the company, so after training at a EAVE-European Producers Workshop in 2012, Wik and I decided to start our own company,” Kjellson explained.
Also Goteborg-based, Kjellson & Wik will “produce content with high artistic value and an original outlook, primarily independent fiction features and shorts. I am a politically engaged person, so I want my films to raise topics for discussion. We have also published a book and produced a podcast,” Kjellson added.
Kjellson produced her partner Wik’s first short, ”Victim-Mentality Rhetoric,” which won the Audience Award for best short in Goteborg in 2013. This year, they are presenting her first feature, ”The Ex-Wife” in Goteborg’s Nordic Film Lab’s Works In Progress section. Also scripted and edited by Wik, and starring Maria Sundbom, Nina Zanjani, Ellen Olaison, Robin Keller and Karl Linnertorp, it follows three women in different relationships.
“With humor and seriousness, it deals with behavior traits that nobody wants, but invariably exist – such as the accommodating girlfriend, the fretful spouse and the brooding ex-wife. It’s a film about changing directions,” Kjellson concluded.
Besides “The Ex-Wife,” Kjellson & Wik is in post-production on “The Committee,” a short by Norway’s Gundhild Enger and Finland’s Jenni Toivoniemi. “We hope to have both ready for an A-festival in May this year,” Kjellson said.
At the Goteborg Festival, Kjellson is also moving Swedish director Anton Källrot’s feature debut, ”The Modern Project,” which has its world premiere in the festival.
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