Lilya 4-Ever 2002

“Lilya is a chirpy girl of sixteen, sunk in a stagnant backwater of what used to be the Soviet Union. She is, to all intents and purposes, orphaned when her witch of a mother abandons her to seek a life in America. Lilya starts with practically nothing and goes downhill from there, winding up selling her body to the vulpine patrons of a bar. What redeems the movie – what renders a squalid experience quite sacred in its intensity – is the vehemence with which the writer and director, Lukas Moodysson, asks whether his heroine has also sold her soul. The caustic portrait that he paints of his native Sweden, to which the deluded Lilya is transported in her quest for a future, has brought him both outrage and acclaim; what is beyond doubt is the brio of his storytelling and the branding of the girl’s misfortune onto our hearts and nerves.” — Anthony Lane, New Yorker 

“When Moodysson released his début feature film, Fucking Åmål, he received a sensational endorsement from Ingmar Bergman who said it was a ‘young master’s first masterpiece’. As far as I can see, this terrible, forthright excursion into the heart of darkness represents a grown master’s mature masterpiece.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian