Paradise Is Burning

All across the Western world, the foster care system is under strain, with nowhere near enough people volunteering to give vulnerable children a place in their homes. In the UK this means, amongst other things, that only half of children taken into foster care are able to remain with their siblings. In Sweden it’s even worse. Children whose parents are not there for them tend to form particularly close sibling bonds, so the distress this causes is considerable. It’s a known contributory factor to children trying to cover up their parents’ failings.

Laura (Bianco Delbravo), Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and Steffi (Safira Mossberg) – aged 16, 12 and six respectively – have been having problems for some time. Their mother regularly disappears, but now it’s summer and they haven’t seen her since Christmas. Laura tries to keep order in the house and both she and Mira strive to give their little sister the best childhood they can in the circumstances. Sometimes they get help from their neighbours, and occasionally an itinerant aunt steps in, but mostly they’re on their own, shoplifting for food, getting by however they can. Other neighbours, aware of the symptoms but not the cause, see them as troublemakers. When intervening to extract Mira from a fight leads to Laura missing a day of school, she gets a call from the local social work department to advise that someone will be coming round to speak to her mother, and panic sets in. How can she keep her sisters from being taken into care, and away from her?

This isn’t an easy problem for a 16-year-old with no reliable adults in her life to solve, and it’s made more difficult by her determination to protect her sisters from the fear she feels. Mira is at the age where she’s just beginning to assert her own independence – old enough to resent Laura’s rules but not mature enough to understand why they’re there, or to grasp what she might be going through. As Laura tries desperately to find a way out of their predicament, Mira increasingly pulls away from her, spending her time in the local pub, drinking and keeping company with adults. She seems to have safe people looking out for her, but the risks of this situation are plain. Meanwhile, Laura catches the attention of local woman Hanna (Ida Engvoll), who is intrigued by her behaviour.

Is Hanna a friend or a would-be exploiter? That’s never entirely clear, though part of her interest in the teenager seems to stem from a desire to reject her own grown-up status. The pair embark on reckless adventures together. It’s a bit of fun for Hanna. Laura, however, has deep unmet emotional needs, and it’s clear that this unbalanced relationship has the potential to go very, very wrong.

Sine Vadstrup Brooker’s cinematography does a fine job of capturing this disconnect, using natural light only and yet creating very different moods in Hanna’s clean, orderly home and the sisters’ chaotic world. We also spend time out of door with a cluster of other local teenagers in scenes which serve as a reminder that kids this age almost always have secret, semi-independent lives away from adult supervision. It is in these scenes that the sisters seem most free, enjoying the long summer twilight and that feeling of eternity condensed in laughter and togetherness. Whatever happens next, these moments will stay with them.

With a background in documentary, director Mika Gustafson captures something that, though not always coherent, feels fresh and raw and real. She’s aided by the intense and spontaneous-feeling performances of her young cast, none of whom have acted before or received any formal training. They’re effortlessly natural together, creating a family which is clearly bound by love despite all the bickering that goes on within it. Together they provide a voice for thousands of children in similar situations – children whose courage and ingenuity ought to amaze us, but who are frequently monstered and often go on to struggle throughout their lives. They also feel immediate and specific, and their story makes for compelling viewing.