‘Meet the Director: Ruben Östlund - Screening Involuntary’

In collaboration with CINEMATEK and Polarise, Bozar has the honour of welcoming Swedish director Ruben Östlund. Everyone who is familiar with the work of Ruben Östlund will know this evening will be something special. Before the screening of Östlund’s directorial feature debut Involuntary, he will join us for an in-depth conversation about his filmmaking practice with journalist Stanislas Ide.

De Ofrivilliga (Involuntary)
Through five vignettes, moral and social dilemmas are presented with the painful realism and dry humour that came to define Östlund’s oeuvre. Set in a pre-summer Sweden we are thrown into different group dynamics (a school class, a birthday party, drinking teenagers…) where peer pressure is at play. Long takes and a fixed camera force the viewer to relate to what is happening.

Ruben Östlund is a controversial filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer, he serves as an observer of contemporary cowardice and hypocrisy. His work is often subversive and seeks to do away with social norms and common decency. In doing so, he genially breaks with the Scandinavian tradition of subdued psychosocial dramas by the likes of Ingmar Bergman. Östlund’s humorous and accurate depiction of human social behaviour quickly put him on the international cinema map. Today, he already has over ten feature films and short films to his credit, including both fiction and documentary.