Pieter Ten Hoopen

In a small Swedish town in the early 1990s, a lonely teacher at the local job center, Åsa, finds herself attracted to an unemployed teenager. His youthful charm, adventurous attitude and ambitious personality reminds Åsa of her younger self. Attempting to get closer to him she arranges for a group of youths to try out one of his business ideas - a wildlife retreat in the mountains. But as the weekend progresses, nothing goes according to plan and the group is soon lost in the woods.

The small town Vladimirskoe lies in the Russian countryside and has struggled to survive after the fall of communism. But it is also a mythical town. According to legend, a lake nearby hides the mystical town Kitezh, which only appears to those pure of heart. In his filmmaking debut, still photographer Pieter ten Hoopen chronicles the town's inhabitants through beautiful tableau's, giving the viewer a sense of the inhabitants' purity of heart. Small elements of nature often break into the pictures, whether it is a fly or a cat walking past, which breaks the illusion of still photography.

In an alternate reality Sweden has become a nationalistic dictatorship and the citizens live in constant fear of being deported. In this dark time Jonna and Felx find each other - but can their love survive the stranglehold of the regime?