Ådalen 31 (Released in the United States as Adalen Riots) is a 1969 Swedish drama film directed by Bo Widerberg. It depicts the 1931 Ådalen shootings, in which Swedish military forces opened fire against labour demonstrators in the Swedish sawmill district of Ådalen killing five people, including a young girl.
The film was X-rated in the United States. It won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
During a strike strike-breakers are being transported to Sandviken, where they are assaulted by the strikers. The military are sent in. On the 14th May 1931 there is a confrontation between demonstrators and the military who open fire and five people are killed and five injured.
Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg is best known internationally for his impressionistic romantic drama Elvira Madigan (1967). Three of his films, All Things Fair (1996), Adalen 31 (1969), and Raven’s End (1964), have received Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Film. Widerberg started out as a novelist, but turned to filmmaking after writing Visionen i Svensk Film/Vision in Swedish Film (1962), a scathing criticism of Ingmar Bergman’s alleged monopoly of Swedish cinema. In his treatise, Widerberg argued for films containing realistic themes dealing with earthier concerns rather than the Bergmanesque tendency to address lofty abstractions on the existence of God. In hopes of creating a “new wave” in Swedish cinema, one that addressed the seething inner lives of characters rather than their neatly unified, socially progressive exteriors, Widerberg made Barnvagnen/Baby Carriage (1963), the story of a young single and pregnant woman who chooses independence over two potential suitors. It was… read more
