By: Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 8/24/2024 – Growing up, we all had moments when we figured life would be pretty nifty without adult supervision. Fun and games and no rules … sounds pretty good, doesn’t it.
For the oldest of three sisters, 16-year-old Laura, the reality of raising her sisters – 12-year-old Mira and little sister Steffi, a mere seven – is more of a challenge than she bargained for. It’s a life without adult supervision, bereft of love, nurturing, and any structure. Certainly, it is not a picnic anyone would wish to enjoy.
This is the story told by Swedish filmmaker Mika Gustafson’s in Paradise Is Burning, an emotional drama that navigates the complexities of society and family in a working-class Swedish suburbia.
The three sisters are left to their own devices by their absent mother. As summer approaches, the trio revel in the excitement of freedom from school and letting their days unfold without the constraints of adult supervision. However, when Laura, the eldest, receives a call that threatens to place them in foster care, she frantically searches for a substitute mother to avoid that fate.
Keeping the truth hidden from her younger sisters, Laura navigates the blurred lines between the thrill of independence and the harsh realities of growing up, as the sisters’ relationships with each other are put to the test.
Paradise Is Burning launches in New York City, with its West Coast premiere coming in two weeks’ time, Friday, September 6th, at the Laemmle Royal and Glendale theaters in Los Angeles.
Gustafson took time earlier this week to talk with The Hollywood Times from her hotel in New York City, where she is getting ready for her film’s North American premiere tonight, August 23rd at the IFC Center. She said the idea for this thought-provoking feature-length film came to her as she surveyed the landscape of movies with similar themes. She discovered it was heavy on stories of boys, but very few stories featuring girls.
Click below to see our exclusive interview:
She remarked, “it’s really important to me that it isn’t just a story about girls. It should be a story about three human beings.”
With that in mind, Gustafson said she embarked on a deliberate casting strategy in her search for the right three human beings. She struck gold when she found three, young, first-time actors – Bianca Delbravo (Laura), Dilvin Asaad (Mira), and Safira Mossberg (Steffi) – after a process that spanned 10 months before the final trio was decided upon and assembled.
“I think we went through a thousand girls before finding these three,” Gustafson said. “I was also looking for this dynamic, thin sibling dynamic. As a director, I like to be involved in the casting process. How you do it is really important in what kind of performance you get later on.”
With her eye toward casting girls with talent, Gustafson said she poured through a pool of potential actors that included anyone and everyone.
“I realized we cannot just go after people who know about film,” she said. “We also have to look everywhere for talent.”
With these talented young ladies in front of the camera for Gustafson, it appears 3’s a charm on screen in Paradise is Burning.
The film is now at https://www.ifccenter.com in NYC and opens at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles on September 6th: https://www.laemmle.com/film/
