Thank you for watching
The Alabaster Boy.
We're developing our next film Recommendations for a Tolerable Life, a Swedish feature film that grows from the same emotional world, but tells its own standalone story.
-
Joar, 23, has left his family and hometown behind to escape a life shaped by addiction, co-dependency and constant crisis, and to build something safer in Uppsala. When his father suddenly dies, he is forced to return home, where his older brother Ivar, who is struggling with addiction, soon disappears.
Together with his mother Marion, Joar begins searching for him through a town marked by old conflicts, addiction and buried family trauma. As the search intensifies, Joar is drawn back into the same patterns of responsibility and co-dependency he has spent years trying to escape. He is forced to confront not only what happened to his brother, but how deeply Ivar’s addiction has shaped the entire family, and his own life.
We are facing a global crisis..
Drug addiction never affects only the person using. Behind these figures are families living with uncertainty, guilt and loss.
Recommendations for a Tolerable Life portrays this reality from the perspective of those left trying to hold the family together.
Why this matters
-
From causes directly or indirectly attributable to drug use in 2023.
-
A category consisting primarily of fatal overdoses. Opioids accounted for the majority.
-
Were living with drug use disorders, including harmful patterns of use and dependence in 2024.
-
were lost to premature death or disability attributable to drug use in 2023.
Our ambition
For us, this film is about the people behind the statistics. Addiction rarely affects one person alone. It moves through families, reshaping relationships and creating patterns of co-dependency, where love, responsibility, fear and the need to help become increasingly difficult to separate.
We want to stay close not only to the person struggling with addiction, but also to those around them: the mother trying to hold everyday life together, the brother who leaves in order to survive, and the family members who slowly lose sight of where caring ends and self-sacrifice begins.
Recommendations for a Tolerable Life is our attempt to portray these people as complex human beings, not as cases, diagnoses or numbers.
Project Status
Recommendations for a Tolerable Life is currently in development within Moving Sweden and has received three development grants from the Swedish Film Institute.
The latest development phase includes the start of the casting process, which will begin in autumn 2026. We are also continuing to refine the screenplay, visual approach and financing structure.
We are currently seeking Nordic co-producers and exploring opportunities to place parts of the post-production within a Nordic partner country.
Principal photography is currently planned for August 2027.
Team
Jack Elliot Lundqvist
Director
Amir Halim & Iman Ismail
Producers
Rikard Nilsson
Director of Photography