Watch unlimited films online for $6.99.
Try MUBI for FREE.
 

Lilya 4-ever

Lilja 4-ever

Sweden, Denmark

2002

109 Min
Color
1.85:1
English, Swedish, Russian
  • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

   |   

DIR Lukas Moodysson

PROD Lars Jönsson, Peter Aalbæk Jensen

SCR Lukas Moodysson

DP Ulf Brantås

CAST Oksana Akinshina, Artyom Bogucharsky, Pavel Ponomaryov, Elina Benenson, Lyubov Agapova, Liliya Shinkaryova, Tõnu Kark, Tomasz Neuman

ED Michel Leszczylowski, Oleg Morginov, Bernhard Winkler

MUSIC Nathan Larson

SOUND Niclas Merits, Peter Schultz

London, Venice (Upstream Competition), Toronto

Synopsis

Lilya, 16-years old, lives with her mother in a run down apartment block somewhere in a former republic of the Soviet Union. She dreams of a much better life like any other teenage girl. Lilya’s mother emigrates to the United States with her new boyfriend, but Lilya is left behind. She has to move to a squalid flat, without receiving any news nor money from her mother. She befriends Volodya, a homeless young boy. They share the flat and try to make the best of their situation. Sniffing glue and wandering in the projects, Lilya soon falls into prostitution in a nightbar to survive, in an escalation of despair. There she meets Andrei, a businessman from Sweden, and falls in love with him. The man offers her a job and lodging in Sweden. The “better life” he promised soon shows its true face.

Director

Original

Lukas Moodysson

With his first two feature efforts, Fucking Åmål (1998) and Together (2000), Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson earned a strong following for his acute, gentle sense of social satire and his remarkably well-drawn and sympathetic characters. Though his third feature, the soul-shredding Lilja 4-Ever, marked a notably dark turn in terms of content for Moodysson, his sense of characterization was perhaps stronger than ever, and the stark tale of a young Russian girl forced into prostitution gained him international acclaim. A native of the South Sweden burg of Lund, Moodysson was the son of hardworking farmers who hailed from the small community of Smaland. When the opportunity arose for Moodysson’s father to study engineering in the 1960s, he relocated to the university town of Lund, funding his education with work at a local hardware store; it was there that Karl Frederik Lukas Moodysson was born in January of 1969. The future director was exposed to an early film influence at age 12 when… read more

Wall

Displaying 4 of 37 wall posts.

Evnad

24Dec11

Pure cinematic bliss!

Picture of Mike

Mike

20Dec11

This film is much more heavy-handed and manipulative than I expected, but it's still immersive and depressing.

Picture of Sonja

Sonja

7Sep11

really really good, really really depressing but really really predictable. unfortunately. still gets 4 stars.

Picture of Worm

Worm

28Aug11

Great, now McDonalds depresses me.

Alex Trip, sabrinask

Related Films

Fans

Displaying 5 of 824 fans.

Lists

Displaying 5 of 151 lists.

Reviews

Displaying 2 of 2

Is there anybody going to listen to my story - 5 stars

By lolo341 on November 28, 2011

Moodysson very loosely based this film on the life of Dangoule Rasalaite, a 16-year-old Lithuanian, who, in 1999, was being kept in a Swedish apartment against her will and forced into prostitution…  read review

Formidable désolation

By hubertg​uillaud on March 14, 2010

La désolation fait souvent du beau cinéma. Dans ce film très dur (réalisé par Lukas Moodysson), on suit une jeune fille solaire, abandonnée dans une affreuse banlieue russe, sans espoir. Et pourtant…  read review

Forum

Displaying 0 discussion topics.