‘Eat Sleep Die’ Review: Sweden’s Submission for Oscar

Gabriela Pichler’s debut feature, “Eat Sleep Die” is a festival favorite and award winner – it took home the Venice Film Festival Audience Award, and was a Grand Jury Award Winner, New Auteurs at AFI FEST 2012. It’s now also Sweden’s submission for Best Foreign Film at the 2014 Academy Awards.

“Eat Sleep Die” is a different look at Sweden, one from the perspective of a young Muslim Swedish/Balkan factory worker named Rasa (an impressive Nermina Lukac in her first role). Rasa works in a factory packaging salad greens. She’s a 20-something woman, who likes to have a good time at work and at home, and takes care of her father, who has a bad back and should be on disability. Rasa is also a very skilled worker, who is fast on the assembly line and thorough in training new workers.

She’s also sadly about to be the victim of a factory downsizing.

Without a high school education or a driver’s license (which costs more than Rasa can afford), Rasa is left in a painful, universally identifiable position – that of being unemployed.

Rasa hustles to find new work, talking to former employers, and going to the employment counseling offered. But in several sobering scenes we see that employment counseling “positive-speak” doesn’t necessarily reflect the life experience of these workers.

Writer/director Pichler does an extraordinary job of tracing the authentic path of Rasa and her colleagues as they struggle to find new jobs, which are very closely tied to giving their lives purpose. With a heartfelt performance, Lukac keeps Rasa real – mixing her spirited outlook with drive, Rasa is not going to be kept down no matter what bureaucratic obstacles stand in her way. Strong too, are her playful relationships with her father (Milan Dragisic) and friend Nicki (Jonathan Lampinen), an animal lover who finds work at his uncle’s slaughterhouse.

Johan Lundborg’s cinematography does well in capturing life in the small factory town as well as presenting a layer of storytelling with his thoughtful shot compositions. Lundborg also shares co-editing duties with Pichler.

Pichler grew up the daughter of working-class Bosnian and Austrian born parents and she herself worked in a cookie factory before attending the School of Film Directing in Gothenburg. Before an industry screening, Pichler explained that she wanted to make a film with characters she could identify with and also use images from an area she grew up in.

Sometimes a personal story can be quite universal as Sweden’s “Eat Sleep Die” vies for a Best Foreign Film nomination come Oscar time.

“Eat Sleep Die” is 100 minutes and unrated.

For other film articles by Lori Huck, check out:
AFI FEST 2013: World Cinema, New Auteurs Highlight 17 Oscar Hopefuls
‘Wadjda’ Review: A Girl, a Bicycle, and Boundaries Pushed in Saudi Arabia