Five kids, one stone-cold marriage, and a woman who wrote her way out of poverty—Swedish cinema doesn't get fiercer.
The life of the swedish writer Moa Martinson: at the age of 18, Moa marries the stone worker Karl and has five children. The marriage becomes stormy and fringed with tragedies. In the adversities, Moa begins to write about her life. She tells unpleasant truths, and doesn't get much understanding. Her life changes when the books are published in ever larger editions. She can tear herself out of her poverty, but never abandons her origins. In 1929 she remarries the writer Harry Martinson.
Acting
Gunilla Nyroos transforms Moa's silence into roaring defiance.
Production
Painstaking period detail of 1920s Swedish poverty.
Director
Anders Wahlgren
Gunilla Nyroos
Moa
Reine Brynolfsson
Harry
Lennart Hjulström
Karl
Mats Bergman
Isidor Knöös
Percy Brandt
Karl Otto Bonnier
Anders Ekborg
Josef Kjellgren
Dan Ekborg
Artur Lundkvist
Stig Engström
Meeting Chairman
Berta Hall
Moa's Mother
Harald Hamrell
Erik Asklund
Roland Hedlund
Newspaper Editor
Krister Henriksson
Radio Executive
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Moa Martinson was Sweden's first major working-class woman writer; the film sparked renewed feminist scholarship on her deliberately 'unladylike' prose.
Gunilla Nyroos spent months in Martinson's actual rural hometown, living without electricity to capture her physicality.
SE
