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SIMON

SIMON AND THE OAKS

By Lisa OHLIN

GOTAFILM AB - as PROD

Drama - Completed 2010

- Year of production
- 2010
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- SWEDEN, GERMANY, DENMARK, NORWAY
- Languages
- SWEDISH, GERMAN
- Budget
- 5 - 10 M$
- Director(s)
- Lisa OHLIN
- Writer(s)
- Marnie BLOK, Marianne FREDRIKSSON
- ISAN
- 0000-0003-3A78-0000-N-0000-0000-5
- EIDR
- 10.5240/887C-902D-6825-7ACC-F2A9-Z
- Producer(s)
- Christer NILSON (GötaFilm), Per HOLST (Asta film)
- Synopsis
- This film traces the extraordinary relationship between a mother and a son and the family they inhabit. The search for who we are and where we come from the yearning for reconciliation between parent and child
  the ever-shifting nature of what makes a family.Simon is an ordinary boy growing up in rural Sweden. Ordinary, that is; until he makes friends with Isak, a psychological damaged Jewish boy who had fled with his father from Nazi Germany; and until he is told that he is adopted - that the working-class couple he'd always assumed to be his parents are, in reality, his uncle and aunt. His biological parents, his aunt and a jewish musician, had met and, sharing no common language, loved each other in an enchanted spot beneath the Trollhattan waterfall eleven years ago.
  So begins Simon's quest for selfhood: a quest that takes him through the bitter privations of the Second World War, through childhood, school, love and career. And, always in the background, his beloved stepmother watches over him, as constant as the oak trees on the cliff top that whispered their secrets to him when he was a child.
  A powerful story of survival and transcendence, sacrifice and forgiveness, showing how even the most damaged heart can heal in the most unexpected ways.
- Partners & financing
- Swedish Filminstitute, Dansih Filminstitute, Nordisk Film (distributor in Scandinavia as well as international Sales Agent), Film I Väst, Swedish and Danish Television (SVT&DR), Nordic Film&TV Fund, Eurimage, A German co-producer, a distributor and a German Regional Fund, a Dutch co-producer (the screenwriter is Dutch and the book is very popular in Holland)