They Call Us Misfits

They Call Us Misfits (Swedish: Dom kallar oss mods) is a 1968 Swedish documentary film directed, produced and written by Stefan Jarl and Jan Lindqvist. The film is an uncompromising account of the life of two alienated teenagers, Kenneth "Kenta" Gustafsson (1948–2003) and Gustav "Stoffe" Svensson (1950–1978). The film, like its successor Ett anständigt liv (1979; A Respectable Life) takes a close but non-moralizing look at the joys and growing pains of mod and "junkie" street culture in Stockholm at the time.

Synopsis

The film begins with an interview with Tompa, a friend of Kenta and Stoffe. He tells how he grew up in orphanages and juvenile prisons. He says that freedom hardly exists for him, but one thing is he sure of is that the time he spent with Kenta and Stoffe and the other mods was the most enjoyable time of his life. The interview cuts to Kenta and Stoffe running through the streets of Stockholm filmed with a fisheye lens. Later we see them walking around at the subway station T-Centralen in Stockholm. They meet friends and go around begging people for food, beer and cigarettes. The workers who are passing by get ridiculed by Kenta and Stoffe.

Oss

Oss (Dutch: [ɔs]) is a municipality and a city in the southern Netherlands, in the province of North Brabant.

Population centres

Topography

Dutch Topographic map of Oss (municipality), June 2015

City Center of Oss

Oss has a shopping center with outlets including The Sting, Houtbrox, C&A, V&D and many more. The center has many squares. The only real shopping streets (also the best known) are the Heuvelstraat, Walstraat and Peperstraat. The squares are connected with these shopping streets and passages. In these passages are also shops. One of the passages (The Passage, Dutch: de Passage, Local Dialect: 't Gengske) had in 2014 a total renovation. It is now looking like an old Dutch street. The Peperstraat is the next street for a total renovation.

The city of Oss

There is archaeological evidence that humans have lived in and around Oss for 4,000 years. Major archaeological finds were the Vorstengraf burial sites and the indigenous-Roman burial fields of Oss-Ussen.

Oss was first mentioned in a letter by Pope Alexander II on 6 May 1069. Oss was granted city rights in 1399 by Hertogin (Duchess) Johanna van Brabant. Present-day Oss has several chemical and pharmaceutical industries like Merck & Co. (previously Schering-Plough, Organon and Diosynth). Oss is also host to the professional football team FC Oss, and is the birthplace of former Manchester United and Real Madrid star Ruud van Nistelrooy, although he did not play for the local side, but for rivals FC Den Bosch.

A Respectable Life

A Respectable Life (Swedish: Ett anständigt liv) is a 1979 Swedish documentary film directed by Stefan Jarl. The film is the second of the Mods Trilogy by Jarl. At the 15th Guldbagge Awards the film won the awards for Best Film and Best Director. It was also selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 52nd Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

Synopsis

A decade has gone by and the spirit of the preceding film, Dom kallar oss mods, has disappeared. Kenta is an alcoholic and lives with his girlfriend Eva. Together they have a son, Patric. Kenta's mom is in jail for manslaughter and Kenta goes to Kronoberg to greet her. Heroin also comes to play and Stoffe is one of those who falls victim to it. He lives with his girlfriend Lena and their young son, Janne. Lena later throws Stoffe out their home when she gets enough of his abuse, and he is forced to live with his mother. Kenta calls Stoffe and decides to meet him, and he tries to persuade him to give up heroin, but the two have a falling out and they separate. This film features other users from the previous film, such as Jajje and Kenta Bergkvist. The film ends with the death of a prominent person in the trilogy.

Stefan Jarl

Stefan Jarl (born 18 March 1941) is a Swedish film director best known for his documentaries. He made the Mods Trilogy, three films which follow a group of alienated people in Stockholm from the 1960s to the 1990s, They Call Us Misfits (1968), A Respectable Life (1979) and Det sociala arvet (1993). A Respectable Life won the 1979 Guldbagge Awards for Best Film and Best Director. Jarl also wrote and directed Jag är din krigare (1997), and directed Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced (2003), The Girl From Auschwitz (2005), and Submission (2010), a documentary about the "chemical burden" of synthetics and plastics carried by people born after World War II.

At the 25th Guldbagge Awards in 1990 he won the Creative Achievement award.

Selected filmography