Nathan Fisher’s Paris-based banner Stray Dogs has acquired international sales rights to Johannes Nyholm’s “Koko Di Kodo Da,” the up-and-coming Swedish director’s follow up to his feature debut “The Giant.”
Weaving reality and fantasy as”The Giant,” “Koko Di Kodo Da” follows a couple who goes on a trip to find their way back to each other a few years after the tragic death of their only child. But the couple ends up reliving a traumatic night over and over again while camping. The story, told through their mutual dreams, is about relationships, grief and love as a healing force.
“The setting is those wee hours of the morning when dreams are at their most relentlessly untamed. “Koko-di Koko-da” was both written and takes place during such a time – this nightmarish landscape between wakefulness and sleep,” said Nyholm.
The director said he wanted the film to show “everyday situations and power struggles lurking beneath the surface in relationships; what is not said, what is embedded between the lines.”
Fisher, a fan of elevated genre films, described “Koko Di Kodo Da” as a “nightmarish ‘Groundhog Day,’ a dreamy tale of dark woods and a universal narrative about a relationship that is falling apart.”
“Scandinavia is one of the most interesting places these days in terms of filmmaking, and Johannes is definitely one of the most powerful, original and sophisticated voices in that region,” added Fisher, who discovered the project and met Nyholm at Les Arcs Festival’s industry village in 2016. The project was pitched the year before at Goteborg.
Nyholm made his feature debut with “The Giant,” a fantasy-filled drama which world premiered at Toronto and went on to play at San Sebastian along with a flurry of festivals. The movie, about a deformed autistic man who tries to win a pétanque championship while dreaming of being a powerful titan, won three Guldbagge Awards, Sweden’s equivalent to the Oscars, and won prizes at San Sebastian, Rotterdam and Warsaw film festivals.
The Swedish helmer previously directed three shorts, “Las Palmas,” “Dreams from the Woods” and “The Tale of Little Puppetboy” which played at Cannes’s Directors Fortnight. “Las Palmas” had also played at Sundance.
