Simon and the Oaks

About The Film

Nominated for a record 13 Swedish Academy Awards, SIMON AND THE OAKS is the picturesque coming-of-age epic about family secrets that entangle two boys from different backgrounds growing up in 1940s coastal Gothenburg.

Intellectually gifted but hindered by his working-class upbringing, Simon (Jonatan S. Wächter) befriends schoolmate Isak (Karl Martin Eriksson), the traumatized son of a wealthy, artistic Jewish bookseller who fled Nazi persecution in Germany. As Swedish anti-Semitism surges, circumstances force the contrasting households to merge into a single makeshift surrogate family that forms and breaks alliances in unexpected ways. Fast forward to after the war, a disastrous romance with a concentration camp survivor (Katharina Schüttler) and a startling discovery send Simon (played as an adult by Bill Skarsgård) in a search for his true identity that will either ruin or redeem him.

Adapted from a 1985 bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson and exquisitely directed by Lisa Ohlin, SIMON AND THE OAKS is a metaphor for human perseverance, and the ongoing cycle of rupture and renewal.