Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.
When filmmaker Sophie Vuković has a chance encounter with an old friend at a demonstration, it provokes a wistful but self-assured exploration of her personal and global identity. Tracing her ancestry through her parents’ migration from former Yugoslavia to Northern Europe via Australia, we are brought into the home and world of a family both moving and tethered.
Through a diverse mix of film styles, blending documentary with the fiction of memories and dreams, the director combines the personal and the political through a gentle first-person narration. Relating the experience of globalised and marginalised identities the world over, Shapeshifters beautifully portrays the yearning for a fixed and stable identity, while wholeheartedly embracing the internationalist spirit that transcends the borders implicit in such an identity. Always on the cusp of two or more cultures, Vuković examines the lasting effects of one generation’s choice to migrate on the next.
Sophie Vuković is a filmmaker and artist based in Stockholm. Her practice is situated between documentary and fiction, and has previously investigated the construction of identity, intimacy and migration. Her films explore how personal relations and experiences are shaped and affected by social and political structures.
Her short film 09:55-11: 05, Ingrid Ekman (2015) won numerous awards at film festivals around the world. Her feature film debut Shapeshifters (2017) explores migration and belonging beyond national borders in a hybrid documentary form. Shapeshifters was nominated for a number of awards and was received critical acclaim in connection with the Swedish cinema release in the fall of 2017. Her films have been shown at film festivals, TV and cinemas, as well as in art exhibition contexts, for example at the Barbican Centre and at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where she was one of the artists who participated in the Moderna Exhibition 2018. The film installation Mother’s Milk (2019) is her thesis work from the Royal Institute of Art and was awarded Bonniers Grant.
