Three by Ruben Östlund

Three by Ruben Östlund

4 Episodes

Swedish provocateur Ruben Östlund—who has made waves in recent years with his art-house sensations FORCE MAJEURE and the Palme d’Or–winning THE SQUARE—began his career with these three fearlessly unflinching studies of uneasy social dynamics, codes of masculinity, and the tension between the group and the individual. Chronicling the oddities and contradictions of human behavior through an almost anthropologically detached, yet quietly caustic lens, they display the evolution of a major filmmaker who has grown to become one of contemporary cinema’s most consistently intriguing and incendiary auteurs.

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Three by Ruben Östlund
  • Ruben Östlund Interview

    Episode 1

    This interview with director Ruben Östlund was recorded in 2021.

  • The Guitar Mongoloid

    Episode 2

    DIrected by Ruben Östlund • 2004 • Sweden
    Starring Mikael Allu, Bjarne Gunnarsson, Erik Gustafsson

    Earning comparisons to the work of Harmony Korine and Roy Andersson, Ruben Östlund’s audacious feature debut is a defiantly lo-fi, virtually plotless portrait of iconoclasts and outsiders living on...

  • Involuntary

    Episode 3

    Directed by Ruben Östlund • 2008 • Sweden
    Starring Villmar Björkman, Linnea Cart-Lamy, Leif Edlund

    Ruben Östlund explores uneasy social dynamics through five darkly humorous, profoundly unsettlingly vignettes in his multichapter sophomore feature, which he has called “a tragic comedy or a comic ...

  • Play

    Episode 4

    Directed by Ruben Östlund • 2011 • Sweden
    Starring Anas Abdirahman, Sebastian Blyckert, Yannick Diakité

    Based on real events, this provocative exploration of group and racial dynamics centers on a band of Black teenagers in Gothenburg who concoct an elaborate game of deception, manipulation, and...