Swedish director Joakim Sandstrom has joined bicoastal/international The Artists Company for representation in the U.S. and out of its London office. This is the first foray stateside for the 28-year-old director/cinematographer, who will continue to work in Sweden through Imperial Films, the one-man production company he started two years ago.
Sandstrom first approached Debbie Turner, executive producer of The Artists Company’s London office a year ago. After the pair struck up a friendship, Sandstrom kept Turner updated as his reel developed, and dropped in to see her every time he was in the U.K. "Debbie and I watched my reel together," he said. "She seemed genuinely interested in my style, so it felt special with her from the very beginning. Just prior to Christmas, we started to seriously discuss working together. I’m very excited about working in the U.S., since my work so far has been European."
Sandstrom has explored his passion for film since childhood. His first experiments were horror movies shot on Super 8 in the forest near his Stockholm home; he funded the films through part-time work. He is largely self-taught in the art of filmmaking—at university, he studied construction engineering. During compulsory military service, Sandstrom convinced his superiors that his talent would be better utilized if he made documentaries about the military’s activities. By the end of his tenure, he had produced five films.
In ’93, he became involved in the startup of TV4 Sundsvall, a Swedish TV channel. There, he worked as a producer, cameraman and editor, and was one of the first people in Sweden to edit on an Avid. After a short stint as a music producer, he purchased a 16mm camera and started directing, initially working on music promos. Upon launching Imperial Films, he expanded his reel to include commercial work.
imperial work
Sandstrom recently directed "Gravity" for Varner, a men’s clothing line; "Lake" for Man Underwear, both via Sprint, Oslo; "Fritz," which promotes the Swedish business telephone directory Foretagstele, via SE Advertising, Stockholm; and "Flowers," a spot for the Finnish radio station "Radio Mafia" via Hasam & Partners, Finland, in conjunction with Ronnberg McCann, Stockholm.
Inspired by the film The Third Man, "Fritz" tackles the sensitive subject of book burnings with a man snatching a Foretagstele from a pile of burning books. The black-and-white spot shows him racing away with the offending material, escaping up a long stairway into an office where he looks up a number, which enables his escape. Meanwhile, a severe-looking commander on horseback sets off in pursuit, accompanied by a team of heavily armed men. They start to crash through the door when the impatient commander shoots his way through the door, only to find the room empty. "Lake" shows a group of muscular men rising from a surreal lake in perfectly crisp (and dry) white underpants; they then begin marching to a military tune. "Flowers" was another post-heavy job that featured an unusually tall woman, a man’s face rising out of clayish ground, Buddhists "flying" on a lily pad while serenely drinking cups of tea, and men and women tucked into flower buds. This spot was created in layers, with the people shot live against greenscreen and the flowers animated in 3-D.
His other projects include music videos and a short film called The True Story Behind Mohammed Ghunem, which was awarded Best Foreign Short Film at the Long Island Film Festival last year. He also has a feature film in development, which he said is about astronauts.
Sandstrom related that two of the big influences in his work are music—"when I hear a great track I am immediately inspired"—and the fact that he has been "playing around with" postproduction equipment, including Avid, Flame and Henry, on his own for a long time.
Roberto Cecchini, executive producer of The Artists Company, said there is a strong design component that pervades Sandstrom’s work. "When I looked at his reel, I was very excited. He’s got an original point of view, whereas so many directors are minor variations of the same thing," said Cecchini. "This is a prodigiously talented, young Swedish director whose entire body of work has been produced in and around Sweden. The reason he joined a company like mine is because there are strong executive producers and a very strong in-house representation team that will be able to … introduce him, and [who will] make that process of interfacing with ad agencies and record companies a protected and guided experience."
