Ester Martin Bergsmark

Ester Martin Bergsmark (born September 29, 1982) is a Swedish movie director and screenwriter most known for the award-winning documentaries Maggie in Wonderland and She Male Snails. Their first fiction feature Something Must Break (2014) has been shown in more than fifty festivals all over the world during 2014, and it will be presented in Cleveland, Guadalajara and Dublin film festivals in 2015. The film has won ten awards, including the Tiger Award, 43rd Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Grand Jury Award in Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival or Best Film and Best Performance for Saga Becker in the Lisbon International Queer Film Festival.

Ester Martin Bergsmark
BornDecember 29, 1982 (1982-12-29) (age 38)
Stockholm, Sweden
OccupationSwedish film director and screenwriter

Biography

Ester Martin Bergsmark was born September 29, 1982 in Stockholm, Sweden. They studied documentary filmmaking at Biskops Arnö Nordens Folkhögskola and were also trained at the Swedish University College of Arts Crafts and Design.[1][2] Together with Swedish director Mark Hammarberg, Bergsmark directed the short film Svälj (2006) and the documentary Maggie in Wonderland (Swedish: Maggie Vaknar på Balkongen) (2008). In Maggie in Wonderland they worked together with Maggie Beatrice "Maggie" Andersson and also participated in Svälj. Maggie in Wonderland was rewarded with a Guldbagge Award for best documentary the same year as it was released.[3]

2009 Bergsmark took part in a feminist project in which several directors and artists directed short movies for a collection called Dirty Diaries. The collection was made with the aim to rethink pornography and consists of 12 shorts and Bergsmark's segment is called Fruitcake. 2009 was also the year Bergsmark got the legal right to change their first name to Ester. Before it had not been possible as the previous name law in Sweden had denied people from adding or changing their name to one from another legal gender.[1][4][5]

Bergsmark received another Guldbagge Award nomination for best documentary 2012 for the movie She Male Snails. The movie was made in collaboration with Swedish author Eli Levén. Bergsmark and Levén had previously been in a relationship that ended a couple of months before the filming of She Male Snails begun. The movie protests against the binary gender system that consists of women and men and begins with Bergsmark talking about the first time they saw Levén as a teenager and the fact that Levén dared being something beyond boy or girl. In interviews Bergsmark has said that while not wanting to live as a woman they consider themself a trans person and find security in not having to have a static gender identity. The movie is a mix of documentary and fiction and received financial support for feature movies.[5][6][7]

In the fall of 2011 Bergsmark and Levén moved to Berlin[5] and worked together in a mutual office on the manuscript to Bergsmark's film Something Must Break. Something Must Break (2014) opened the Gothenburg Film Festival 2014 and was nominated for a Dragon Award for Best Nordic picture. The movie is based on a book by Levén (Swedish title: Du är rötterna som sover vid mina fötter och håller jorden på plats). Just like She Male Snails Something Must Break deals with the topic of belonging somewhere in between what is considered being male and what is considered being female. It also circles around young love and beginning to accept yourself.[8]

2014 Bergsmark received the Mai Zetterling-scholarship, a scholarship for movie directors working with short movies or documentaries. The scholarship was handed out at the Gothenburg Film Festival on the January 24 that year.[2][9]

Filmography
  • 2006 – Svälj
  • 2008 – Maggie in Wonderland (Original Title in Swedish: Maggie Vaknar på Balkongen
  • 2009 – Dirty Diaries (Fragment: Fruitcake)
  • 2012 – She Male Snails (Original Title in Swedish: Pojktanten)
  • 2014 – Something Must Break (Original Title in Swedish: Nånting Måste Gå Sönder)
  • 2018 – Swedish Candy, Some Violence and a Bit Of Cat

Prizes and awards

Something must break
  • Tiger Award, 43rd Rotterdam International Film Festival
  • Mai Zetterling Grant (Ester Martin Bergsmark), 37th Gothenburg Film Festival
  • Frameline38 Wells Fargo First Feature Award, Frameline38 – San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
  • Grand Jury Award, International features, 2014 Outfest LA
  • Best Feature Film and Best Performance (Saga Becker), Lisbon International Queer Film Festival 18
  • Silver Hugo Q Award, Chicago Film Festival 2014
  • Jury Prize, 25th Hamburg Queer Filmfestival
  • Sunny Bunny Winner, Molodist- 45th Kiev International Film Festival
  • Best Film, 15th Mezipatra Queer Film Festival (Prague)
  • Best Feature, Side by side LGBT International Film Festival (St Petersburg)
  • Ocaña Award-Best LGTBI Film, Seville European Film Festival 2014

References
  1. "Ester Martin Bergsmark | Gothenburg International Film Festival". Giff.se. Archived from the original on September 24, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  2. "Regissören Ester Martin Bergsmark får Konstnärsnämndens Mai... – Konstnärsnämnden". Mynewsdesk.com. January 24, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  3. "The Guldbagge Awards". Sfi.se. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  4. "Dirty Diaries (2009)". Sfi.se. Archived from the original on April 12, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  5. "Henligheten | Fokus". Fokus.se. September 7, 2012. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  6. Erika Hallhagen (September 6, 2012). "Pojktanten trots mot tvåkönad värld | Kultur | SvD" (in Swedish). Svd.se. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  7. "Ester Martin Bergsmark gör två filmer med transtema – i samarbete med Eli Levén | Filmbloggen | SVT.se". Blogg.svt.se. Archived from the original on March 20, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  8. Maria Domellöf-Wik 031-62 41 48 maria.domellof@gp.se. "Ester Martins nya öppnar filmfestivalen – Kultur & Nöje – Göteborgs-Posten" (in Swedish). Gp.se. Archived from the original on February 1, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
  9. "Mai Zetterling-stipendiet". Konstnarsnamnden.se. February 12, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
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