Ester Martin Bergsmark — Director (4)

Movie

Maggie in Wonderland (2008)
Maggie vaknar på balkongen WikiData IMDb TMDB
other title: Maggie vaknar på balkongen
A portrait of Maggie, through Swedish everyday life. Maggie always co-ordinates high heels with a beret, and she loves gold. She lives on the 15th floor in one of Malmö’s suburbs. Her balcony is littered with reminders of her previous life. Under a golf bag, next to a racing ticket from 1999, are the remains of a pigeon that she killed when she couldn’t sleep.

Movie

She Male Snails (2012)
Pojktanten WikiData IMDb TMDB
other title: Pojktanten
Caught between two genders, the artist Eli Leven and Ester Martin Bergsmark touch and caress each other, while they bath together in clouds of steam. A persuasive voice-off describes the often hard and painful growing process, which led them to choose to be neither males nor females. But something else entirely. While memories of adolescences scarred by homophobia and discrimination are presented, the audience is also captivated by poetic evocations of bodies, of snowy woods, water, nature, and snails: the symbol of androgyny. This movie moves the audience profoundly. It is a hymn to sexual fluidity, which reveals the search for the true self, rendered through the use of contrasting, vivid, and often acid bright photography. Intended as a television portrait of the transgender artist Eli Leven, it is a psychedelic docu-fiction, a hybrid movie inspired by Derek Jarman's Sebastian.

Movie

A Sweetness from Nowhere (2026)
En ljuvlighet från ingenstans IMDb TMDB
other title: En ljuvlighet från ingenstans
Filmmaker Ester Martin Bergsmark interrogates their response to a transphobic slur hurled at them following their move to Berlin. Exploring the root of violence and its nature, this is a powerful meditation on the trans experience and a treatise on how to move forward from fear.

Movie

Something Must Break (2014)
Någonting måste gå sönder WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
other title: 断开爱链 / Någonting måste gå sönder …
Bergsmark’s first fiction feature captures the turbulent relationship between the gay cross-dressing Sebastian and his lover Andreas, who is straight. Something Must Break is an intimate and emotional picture of people looking for who they can be and are allowed to be. Ester Martin Bergsmark drew inspiration from a Swedish cult novel as well as his own experiences as a transgender.