Written and directed by Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja, Aniara is their first feature film. Based on an epic 1956 science fiction poem by Harry Martinson, Kagerman shared the poem with his grandmother while she was in a hospital recovering from a stroke. “Growing up, I was very close to my grandmother. She was extremely playful and interested in literature. We often role-played books we had read, even when I got older,” explains Kagerman. “Together we went to see a theater play of Aniara. The following night she got a stroke. I started to read the book aloud to her at the hospital. As she was getting better, we started to role-play it and pretend that the big hospital was the space ship Aniara. Every doctor and patient its passengers. That’s when the story truly hit me and us, on a very deep level.”

Kagerman and Lilja worked with each other for over ten years now. “And since the beginning of our collaboration, we’ve been highly influenced by each other and stolen each other’s interests,” jests Lilja.  

The movie is beautiful but heart-wrenching and not a story for the faint of heart because it is sensitively intense. The imagery and story haunt you after the end of the movie because it is intelligent. The movie is not uplifting but more of sociological look at, according to Martinson, where the Earth populace is headed.

The movie introduces one of the many spaceships used for transporting Earth’s fleeing population to their new home-planet Mars. The destruction of Earth occurs, and before the crew and passengers become accustomed to being in space, she collides with space junk and thrown off course. The passengers slowly realize that they’ll never be able to return.

Mimaroben, played by Emelie Jonsson in her first feature film leading role, runs a room where a sentient computer allows humans to experience near-spiritual memories of the Earth.

As the ship drifts further into the endless void more and more passengers require Mimaroben’s services and stress of the job builds on her as she is the only one who can keep the growing insanity and lethal depression at bay.

In Aniara’s inexorable journey towards destruction, there is a warning that cannot be emphasized enough. There’s only one Earth. It’s time to take responsibility for our actions.

The movie is in Swedish with English subtitles, so finding Aniara in English is not offered. The directors felt the necessity to bring the story to the silver screen. “The apocalypse has already started, hasn’t it? There’s a risk that Aniara might become our future, and the questions the film deals with are extremely relevant today,” adds Kagerman.

Though Martinson’s poem is ambiguous on whether the main character is a man or a woman, Kagerman and Lilja felt it essential to focus on a woman while the overall movie centers on females. “It’s not 100% clear what gender the main character has in the book, although it’s probably a man,” explains Lilja. “But we love our female lead and always had her in mind. In the film, she has a relationship with another woman and her best friend, the astronomer, is a woman.”

The movie’s special effects are low-key without extensive CGI or expensive science-fiction sets. Filming occurred on location in shopping malls and Scandinavian Ferries with set design by Linnea Petterson and Maja-Stina Asberg. The directors wanted to create a here and now feeling. “We wanted the ship to feel familiar. If we were to emigrate in large scale to Mars today, we’re pretty sure that the ships will contain both shopping malls, bowling, and spas. But especially shopping malls,” explains Kagerman.  

It took the two directors four years to complete the movie with most the time spent in post-production with reshoots to add to the storyline. They shot inserts in their living room and at the farm where Sophie Winqvist Loggins, cinematographer, lives in the south of Sweden.

Aniara won several awards on the film festival circuit including Les Arcs European Film Festival Best Actress for Emelie Jonsson and honorable mention for Kagerman and Lilja. T

Aniara is streaming on Amazon and the usual on-demand platforms available in your region.

Martinson message in his poem is serious as a warning to the people of Earth. The directors want the audience to reflect on the spacecraft they’re already onboard, called Earth and the extremely short period we have on it. “It might sound depressing, but it’s actually the opposite. We are here today. There is still some time,” adds Kagerman and Lilja.