The film focuses on describing the life of Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002), a Swedish children’s novelist, and more specifically her years as a very young woman (16 years old) when she had a child with a nearly-divorced man.
As a result, she was forced to hide in Stockholm during her pregnancy and give birth in Denmark, where the father’s name is optional.
Most of the scenes concern the struggle of a young woman to raise her child, whom she entrusts to a nanny until a relatively advanced age and who shows affection only for his nanny, whom he calls “mama”.
Besides the various difficulties she faces in bringing her child back home, particularly financial ones, she then encounters much difficulty in being loved by him and being accepted by her family—farmers living in the countryside—amid a very conservative context (we are in the 1920s).
The Danish director shows that this queen of children’s literature (the film begins and ends with Astrid opening her mail sent by children whose insightfulness and kindness are touching) was far from being a rosy character.
An emotional, touching, and delicate film with a remarkable performance by its leading actress, Alba August, who tells an extraordinary story without the slightest critical sense but in a passionate manner.
