Das Sommerbuch

After her mother’s death, nine-year-old Sophia spends the summer with her grandmother (Glenn Close) and her father in a wooden house on a remote little island in the Gulf of Finland. Through a series of short episodes and various perspectives, a picture of the family gradually emerges. While her grandmother is slowly saying goodbye to life and passing on her wisdom to her granddaughter with quiet, subtle humor, Sophia longs for adventure—and in doing so, must confront her fears. Her father, on the other hand, escapes his grief over his wife by throwing himself into work and fails to realize how much his daughter needs him.

As the creator of the Moomins, the little hippopotamus-like trolls, the Finland-Swedish comic artist, illustrator, and painter Tove Jansson (1914–2001) became world-famous. Her novel The Summer Book (1972), on which the film is based, is considered a modern classic of Scandinavian literature.