THE GIRL, a film by Fredrik Edfeldt that premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, and was selected as one of ten films in the Variety Critic’s Choice program at the 2009 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, will will open in New York at Cinema Village on September 17 and in Los Angeles at Laemmle Sunset 5 on October 1.  Other cities will follow.

In a lonely house on the countryside a ten year old girl takes her first steps from childhood into the world of grown-ups. The girl has to spend her summer with her bohemian aunt when her parents go to Africa to work with an aid project. But the aunt isn’t reliable and when she goes off sailing with a man she has met, the girl decides to take care of herself.

A tragic and humorous journey starts, a journey that will put the girl through many tests. Through her neighbours and occasional visitors to the house she meets an absurd and insensitive grown-up world. Losing contact with reality, she becomes more and more withdrawn from the outside world, yet manages to find some relief in her own world of books, dreams, pictures and experiments.

Fredrik Edfeldt Grew up in the Stockholm suburb of Vallentuna. Studied film theory and mass communication at the Stockholm University as well as filmmaking at Stockholms filmskola. He has worked as a director at Sveriges Television and currently works as a director of commercials at ACNE Film, in Sweden as well as internationally. His short films Barnsäng/In Childbed (2001) and Innesluten/Enclosed (2004) were both nominated for a Best Swedish Short Award at Göteborg Film Festival.