FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Lukas Moodysson - Lilja 4ever (engl. subt.)

We know the story of Lilja from the newspaper. How a 16-year-old girl from Russia is abandoned by her mother and falls in love with a handsome stranger. Hoping for a better future, Lilja moves to Sweden, where she is imprisoned as a prostitute. Lilja is naive and innocent. We know that she is in danger. But Lilja thinks that this is necessary for her survival. The fact that the story of Lilja is not an isolated case breaks my heart all the more! Lukas Moodysson's Lilja 4ever is one of the saddest and most moving movies of all time! Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) grows up somewhere in the former Soviet Union. In a desolate prefabricated housing estate, as we do not know it as Berliners. Her best friend is called Volodya (Artyom Bogucharsky) and has to play basketball with a can because he doesn't have a ball. Lilja's mother confesses to her daughter that she is engaged again. Her husband would take her to America, but Lilja couldn't be the same. The daughter is to follow. The mother is heartless. A woman born in a society as cold as it is desperate. The scene in which she leaves Lilja and the daughter runs behind the car, screaming, I could never forget again. I have to think about it and feel a dumpling in my throat. The moment Lilja lives alone at home, her aunt comes to see her. She throws the child out; from now on Lilja is "allowed" to live in her aunt's barrack. Is there a better environment somewhere? Anyway, Lilja won't find them. Instead she is having sniff parties with her friends. Volodya also lives on the street since his father threw him out. He talks about sex, as children do, and Lilja adopts the six-year-old like a big sister. Her way into prostitution doesn't surprise us. Without money for food... The girlfriend shows it off and can then buy things. Lilja hesitates, she disgusts herself. Finally she gives in. She must. Again and again the camera shows her child's face while she sleeps with shapeless men. Worst of all; a montage of her most disgusting sex scenes. But Lilja can now afford junk, alcohol and cigarettes. She even buys a basketball for her little "brother". But then she meets Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov), who doesn't want sex. He drives Lilja home, she starts to trust him. He tells her about a better life in Sweden... We see through Andrei immediately and even Volodya does. But Lilja is blinded. Just like her mother did, she will leave Volodya behind to catch up with him... Lukas Moodysson filmed Lilja4ever as clearly and directly as a documentary. A work full of tenderness and sadness! We look at some scenes from Lilja's perspective; how she imagines heaven and her death. It is so incredibly sad that even after weeks of prostitution she still recites her prayer and believes in an escape. But every possibility remains only an illusion. By the way, Moodysson's film came to a good end in life: the Swedish Minister of the Interior passed a law that allowed prostitutes like Lilja to surrender to the police without being deported.