Stockholm on Screen

About this Stockholm film tour

Stockholm has given the world more film stars than its size suggests. Many of them started out within a few kilometers of each other. On this tour we walk the streets they lived on, the stage where they trained and the studio grounds where they worked.

I have loved film since I was a teenager. As a student I volunteered at film festivals. Later I made five documentaries of my own, from research to filming and editing. I have also been on the other side of the camera, as a contestant on Robinson, the Swedish version of Survivor. What interests me most is how a culture expresses itself on screen. What does a film tell you about the people who made it?

The route

Södermalm: Garbo, Millennium and the Skarsgårds

Greta Garbo was born in 1905 at Blekingegatan 32. Her family was poor and lived in a cold-water flat. The house was torn down in the 1970s. A short walk away is Greta Garbos torg, with a bronze profile of her, next to her old school, Katarina Södra.

A few streets north is the Stockholm of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium books and films. Mikael Blomkvist lives at Bellmansgatan 1. Lisbeth Salander buys a 21-room top-floor flat at Fiskargatan 9 and puts the name “V. Kulla” on her door, after Pippi Longstocking’s Villa Villekulla. Mellqvist Kaffebar on Hornsgatan was Larsson’s own café, and Blomkvist’s too.

From these hills you look across the water to the Royal Palace. In Ruben Östlund’s The Square, the palace has become an art museum called X-Royal. The film won the Palme d’Or in 2017, the first top prize in Cannes for a Swedish director since 1951. Östlund won it again in 2022 with Triangle of Sadness.

Södermalm is also the Stockholm of Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best! (2013): three 13-year-old girls who start a punk band in 1982. Many of the stone facades of Söder in the film were built as sets in a studio in Trollhättan. Moodysson’s earlier film Together (2000) is set in a Stockholm commune in 1975.

Södermalm is also home to several members of the Skarsgård family. Stellan is the father. Alexander played the Swedish tech boss Lukas Matsson in HBO’s Succession.

Gärdet and Östermalm: Filmhuset, the Royal College of Music and Studio 24

Filmhuset is the home of the Swedish Film Institute. Ingmar Bergman gave his private archive to the institute. It holds thousands of documents and about 10,000 letters. In 2007 UNESCO added it to its Memory of the World Register. The building’s two cinemas are named Bio Victor and Bio Mauritz, after the silent-film directors Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller.

Swedish film in the 1960s also tested what could be shown on screen. Vilgot Sjöman, born in Stockholm, made I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967). In the United States the film was seized as obscene. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.

At the Royal College of Music, Kungliga Musikhögskolan, Ludwig Göransson studied jazz and graduated in 2007. He has since won three Oscars for best score, for Black Panther, Oppenheimer and Sinners.

On Sibyllegatan 24 is Roy Andersson’s Studio 24. He bought the building in 1981 with money from directing commercials and set up his studio on the ground floor. Here he built almost every scene of his late films as still, carefully planned tableaux, often with non-actors he found on the streets of Stockholm. Songs from the Second Floor won the Jury Prize in Cannes in 2000. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2014, the first Swedish film to do so. About Endlessness won him the Silver Lion for best director in 2019. Studio 24 is a working studio, so we see it from the street.

Nybroplan: Dramaten

Garbo studied at the acting school of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Dramaten, from 1922 to 1924. Mauritz Stiller cast her in Gösta Berlings saga (1924) and gave her the name Garbo. Ingrid Bergman, born in Stockholm in 1915, was also accepted at the school. She went on to win three Oscars. Alicia Vikander moved alone to Stockholm at 15 to train at the Royal Swedish Ballet School, and won an Oscar for The Danish Girl.

Mai Zetterling trained at the same school in the 1940s. She became an actress in Sweden and Britain, and later a director. Her first feature, Loving Couples (1964), caused a scandal at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965. Her film The Girls (1968) starred three of Bergman’s actresses: Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom. Harriet Andersson, born in Stockholm, became a star with Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953).

Ingmar Bergman led Dramaten from 1963 to 1966 and staged many plays here. In 1986 he gave the role of Hamlet to Peter Stormare. Hollywood later knew Stormare from Fargo and The Big Lebowski.

Vasastan: Astrid Lindgren’s home

Astrid Lindgren lived at Dalagatan 46, next to Vasaparken, from 1941 until her death in 2002. Here she first told the story of Pippi Longstocking to her daughter Karin. Her books became many films and TV series. We see the house from the outside. A visit inside needs a separate booking.

Solna: Gamla Filmstaden in Råsunda

From 1920 to the early 1970s, Råsunda was Sweden’s Hollywood. About 400 films were made here. The first was Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage. In 1957 Bergman filmed The Seventh Seal here in 35 days. The European Film Academy has named the site a Treasure of European Film Culture. I guide you around the old studio grounds.

Add a guided visit at Gamla Filmstaden

The foundation that cares for the site, Filmstadens Kultur, offers its own tours. You can add one to your day:

Times and prices are set by Filmstadens Kultur and can change. I confirm them when I plan your day.