Beauty Will Save the World

Director Stefan Jarl interviews his mentor Arne Sucksdorff, the ‘father of Swedish documentary’, who worked from 1940 to 1965, and recently passed away. With his modest oeuvre of four full-length and thirteen short films, both fiction and documentary, Sucksdorff won an Academy Award in 1947 for his short film MÄNNISKOR I STAD, among other prizes. The 83-year-old filmmaker speaks with the tone and argumentation of a friendly teacher. According to him, he has always sought the balance between documentary and poetical truth. His films stand out because of their sharply lit black-and-white images, strict frames from fixed camera angles and a key role for the sound. Even his nature scenes look as if they were made in a studio, they are so accurate. It comes as no surprise that some of the animals portrayed were tame. Sucksdorff proved his thesis that one has to make subjective, national films in order to reach a broad, international audience.