The Guitar Mongoloid

Ruben Östlund portrays the trams, the river, and the archipelago of “Jöteborg” with dirty digital images in an epoch-making debut film.

Really, you only need to describe the cultural terrorism of the first scene. A twelve-year-old boy walks around on a roof. Below, the Göta Älv flows by. In the background, the sunset over Hisingen colors the sky pink. The boy goes about destroying the TV antennas on the roof while everyone is watching Sing-along at Skansen. His sabotage interrupts the broadcast just as Lasse Berghagen is in the middle of the refrain of the theme song “Stockholm i mitt hjärta” (“Stockholm in My Heart”). The Guitar Mongoloid is a film that wants to destroy and offer alternatives. It is a film that wants to burn down Stockholm and lift up the truth about places and people in Göteborg, beyond legends and the lies. This pioneering digital work was scorched by the evening press in the capital city and has never reached a large audience. Still, The Guitar Mongoloid is one of the most influential Swedish films of the 2000s—a sudden flash of a time of rupture in cinema and a completely unique portrayal of “Jöteborg” as it is called in this aggravating symphony of a city. The film will be screened in cooperation with Cinemateket.

• Jonas Holmberg