Ruben Östlund is a provocateur. He’s a filmmaker who designs his films around confronting viewers with the kinds of necessary questions that rarely get asked. His primary target: the way society influences people to act out in ways that go directly against their own interests. His films call out the unspoken rules people obey in order to function with each other, and question why we sometimes generate a conflict between our thoughts and actions. Last year, Östlund finally broke through to North American Audiences with Force Majeure, his award-winning film about a family’s skiing vacation gone wrong.

Up until recently, Östlund’s previous films weren’t available for North American audiences; none of them received distribution of any kind in the US and Canada. But now, thanks to Force Majeure, Östlund’s first three films, along with two of his shorts, have been screening across the US and Canada in the series In Case of No Emergency: The Films of Ruben Östlund. The series has now made its way to Toronto, where it will screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox from April 9^th to 14^th.

Going through Östlund’s filmography, it’s easy to see an evolution of form and content that increases in scale and ambition. The Guitar Mongoloid (Screens Sunday, April 12^th at 6:30pm, along with two short films), Östlund’s debut feature, is his most basic work, and the one that has Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson’s influence all over it. The film plays out in a series of slightly connected vignettes, with the camera observing several groups of societal outcasts across the same city. It’s a hit-and-miss collection of scenes that go from inappropriately hilarious (a woman with OCD trying to leave her apartment) to unbearably tense (two bikers convince their friend to play Russian roulette). Other than the focus on society’s lower classes and “undesirables,” there isn’t much of a thematic connection here, but the film establishes Östlund’s distinct style from the get-go: a stationary camera, usually placed far away from the action, observing events over a long take. The literal and figurative distance from the characters gives Östlund’s film the feeling of watching surveillance footage rather than something invented.

Östlund’s obsession with realism is at its strongest in The Guitar Mongoloid, as the shoestring budget, shoddy audio and blurring of one character’s face give off the sense that the film is more documentary than fiction. In Östlund’s second feature, Involuntary (Screens Saturday, April 11^th at 6:30pm), he improves on the format he established in Guitar Mongoloid. Involuntary also unfolds in a series of vignettes, but with stronger visuals and a strong thematic link between each of the film’s five stories. Within each segment, a trend emerges: characters behave in ways that go against their best interests, just so they won’t get ostracized. It’s reminiscent of psychological tests and phenomenon like the Milgram experiment, or the infamous murder of Kitty Genovese, where external forces paralyzed people into immoral action or complete inaction. Involuntary actually has a scene where a teacher puts one of her students through a psychological test to point out the power of peer pressure. A student is shown a picture of two lines, one short and one long, and gets asked to pick the longer one, not knowing that no matter what she picks her classmates will disagree with her, insisting the shorter line is the right one. Eventually the girl incorrectly picks the shorter line, even though she admits she knows it isn’t the correct answer.

Three years after Involuntary, Östlund took a massive leap forward with Play (Screens Thursday, April 9^th at 6:30pm), his best film to date. The style stays the same, but this time the focus stays on one story instead of several. Based on a series of real-life petty crimes, Play follows a group of black, immigrant children as they bully and rob three well-to-do kids through an elaborate, lengthy scheme. It’s a highly provocative film, and signifies a major shift for Östlund. He suggests that the bullying kids get away with their crimes because their targets have a fear of being labelled racist if they don’t comply. Naturally, this racial aspect of the film sparked some outrage from viewers, but there was something more unsettling about what happens in Play. In Involuntary, there was no sense of maliciousness on anyone’s part; people tended to put the pressure on themselves to do things they didn’t want to do out of a need to “fit in.” In Play, the characters have evolved. They’re aware of societal standards, and have no qualms about taking advantage of them to get what they want. That blatant “rule breaking” could have been what got under viewers’ skin the most.

Force Majeure (Screens Tuesday, April 14^th at 6:30pm) isn’t nearly as provocative as Play, but its story of a father’s selfish action during a crisis is by far his most accessible film to date. It uses a more conventional style (it might be the first time he uses shot reverse shot in any of his films), and its focus on a white, upper-class nuclear family means the racial landmines of Play are avoided altogether. But some of Force Majeure’s themes, like dealing with people’s “selfish” instincts to survive, are far more universal. And it’s Östlund’s funniest film to date, with almost every moment dedicated to tearing down its main character’s masculinity in the most uncomfortable ways imaginable. Force Majeure’s teeth may not be as sharp as Play’s, but the film still has a lot of bite to it. And while the film’s success—a US remake was just announced not too long ago—could push Östlund in a more mainstream direction, it’s hard to imagine his work getting any less fascinating. Few filmmakers can confront viewers with such grand-scale, daunting questions and get them laughing at the same time.

Read our interview with Ruben Östlund

In Case of No Emergency: The Films of Ruben Östlund plays at the TIFF Bell Lightbox from April 9th to 14th. To find out more information and buy tickets, click here.

Ruben Östlund is a provocative filmmaker, making sure audiences react to what he puts on-screen. This isn’t the kind of provocation that would classify him as an enfant terrible either. Östlund doesn’t use explicit sex or violence to get people talking. He’s highly aware of social norms and expectations, and in Play, his last film, he gleefully dwelled on the contradictions that arise from such standards. That film, based on a real-life case where several black kids elaborately robbed young white boys, was an exercise in frustration. The film’s climactic scene has a father of one victim aggressively confront one of the young perpetrators, only to get chewed out by someone watching nearby for attacking a poor minority. Force Majeure doesn’t have anything as maddening as that sequence, only because he sets his sights on a more digestible topic: the white, affluent, nuclear family and its patriarchal centre.

Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their two children head out for a vacation at a ski resort in the French Alps. During a family meal outside the resort, a controlled avalanche nearby suddenly appears to lose control. With no time to think, Ebba immediately grabs her kids, while Tomas grabs his iPhone and bolts off in the other direction. The avalanche turns out to be a false alarm; it stops just in time, covering everyone in a cloud of white fog for a brief moment. Once the air clears, it’s obvious that a major shift just occurred within the family unit. When it came time for Tomas to act as the strong, protective man in the family, he did the exact opposite. The next three days of the vacation deals with the fallout from Tomas’ cowardice, with Östlund hilariously letting it all play out through one awkward, thorny interaction after another.

Force Majeure is disarmingly funny because everything about it screams drama. Östlund and cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel use the Alps location to create a precise, sterile atmosphere, the kind of style that immediately brings Michael Haneke to mind. Combined with the subject of a family quickly falling apart, it’s natural to expect something serious and emotionally charged. Instead, Östlund has fun with the levels of discomfort he can create out of his story. Ebba repeatedly brings up what happened whenever they talk to anyone else, demanding their opinion on how Tomas behaved. The most painfully funny moment comes when Ebba drags Tomas’ brother Mats (Kristofer Hivju) into the discussion. Torn between a familial commitment to protect his brother and the indefensible faux pas he committed, Mats’ attempt at a defense for Tomas provides one of the film’s biggest laughs.

In fact, most of the laughs come at Tomas’ expense. When Ebba confronts him over running away from his family, he denies it and tries to move on. It takes too long for him to understand he can’t just settle back into the role of patriarch again, that his status as head of the family might actually be in jeopardy. He sets off on his own for a day, hoping to get back in touch with his manly side, only to get his pride and machismo wounded in the most embarrassing way. Ebba doesn’t fare too well on her own either; she looks for help by talking to another woman vacationing at the resort, but her unconventional lifestyle (part of which includes an open relationship with her husband) only shatters Ebba’s perception of family and gender roles further. Östlund sees the absurdity of still believing in archetypes like the strong father or the protective mother when, in reality, those types don’t really exist. It’s hard not to laugh when Östlund shows how archaic of a belief system it is.

And while the film is more than happy to tear into the kinds of roles people play for themselves and with others, there’s a feeling of Östlund pulling back a little bit. As the family’s vacation starts winding down, and their fractured relationship must lead to some kind of resolution, the way it plays out feels lacking. The final scene, a cute attempt to extend the film’s themes from family to community, doesn’t stick the landing. That absence of a strong conclusion, along with the comedic tone, makes Force Majeure light on its feet, an enjoyable but not too penetrative exploration of a fascinating topic. That’s not exactly a bad thing, though. Östlund’s film is great entertainment, a wickedly funny takedown of masculinity and the family unit. Other films wish they could be this incisive.

Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund seems to have found a breakthrough hit with his fourth feature Force Majeure. Östlund’s two previous films, Involuntary and Play, gained some popularity on the festival circuit, neither of them coming close to the success of his latest work (in fact, Play and Involuntary don’t have US distribution). Force Majeure focuses on the 5 day vacation of a family in the French Alps. A controlled avalanche near the resort appears to go terribly wrong, and with a wall of snow barreling toward them Tomas, the father, impulsively runs away, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. The avalanche turns out to be a false alarm, stopping before it hit the resort, and now the family must deal with the fallout from Tomas’ actions. Force Majeure incisively picks apart gender roles and societal expectations, exposing them for the absurd, hilarious archetypes they really are.

Force Majeure premiered earlier this year at Cannes to critical raves, and since then the film has only gained momentum. Sweden selected the film as its submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and in the eyes of some it’s a frontrunner in the category. To promote Force Majeure’s Canadian release, we sat down with Ruben Östlund for a brief chat about what inspires him, his connection to the film’s location, and much more.

Force Majeure will open in Toronto this week before expanding across Canada. If you’re in the US, you can currently catch the film in select theatres before an eventual VOD release.

You said the idea for Force Majeure came from hearing an anecdote by a woman who had a similar experience with her boyfriend. Your previous film Play is based on a series of real-life crimes. Do you tend to find inspiration from real-life incidents?
For Play, when it came to the robbery in itself, what I got interested in was the image of five black boys robbing three white boys. It had so many questions in it. It was a racial question, [a question of] class, society…This was a topic that we have such a problem handling, so we tend to look in another direction. For me it was a provocation in a way that forced us to talk about what we have seen.

In a way Force Majeure is the same thing. It’s a man acting in a way he is not expected to. It is totally forbidden to abandon your family when you’re supposed to stand up for them. There was something about Tomas’ behaviour that is opposite to the whole of film history. The most reproduced character in film history is probably the man as a hero. Maybe the woman as a sex object is more reproduced than the main hero, but Tomas is acting in a way that is really forbidden.

For my friend in kind of the same situation, where he was acting cowardly…He didn’t try to protect his girlfriend. It created a chain reaction of problems, and they were really close to splitting up. They’re still together and have kids now. When I heard their story, I understood something about the set-up of Force Majeure that connects itself to deeper questions. I also got a hold of a sociological study of airplane hijackings where you could see the frequency of divorce is extremely high afterward. And of course it’s because you see a side of your partner that makes you say “I don’t want to continue living with this person.” There was also an investigation about survivors of ship catastrophes from the Titanic to the MS Estonia, and you can see the percentage of survivors are highest with men in a certain age. This is the total opposite from what we’ve learned. We have learned that women and children are first in the lifeboat, but they are actually the ones that die the most. The crew is more likely to survive than the passengers as well. So there was something about catastrophic crisis situations and expectations of how humans behave that was not true at all, and that really interested me.

Your films are bringing things to light that people don’t want to talk about. Do you feel inclined to take from real-life incidents because of this? If this was entirely a creation, if wasn’t based on something real, people may use that as an excuse to say “That’s not real, that’s an invention.” Because you’re taking inspiration from something that actually happened, it’s harder for people to dismiss what you portray.

Exactly. In a way the family, the mother and father and kids in the film are representing the nuclear family. That was very important to me, so it couldn’t be a specific incident. I wanted it to reflect the roles and expectations of a man and a woman in a nuclear family. The kinds of roles that we just, without being aware of it, start to play and engage ourselves in when we are starting a relationship or going into a family.

Why the location in the Alps?
I started out as a ski filmmaker. I was making ski films in my 20s, so I wanted to find a way to get back to that environment. It’s also interesting at a ski resort because there’s a struggle between man and nature. Civilization tries to control the power of nature with controlled avalanches, making tracks in the snow, having all those lifts go up and down. It’s a good place for this kind of drama.

Did you always want to approach this with a comedic tone? What made you want to put comedic elements in the film as opposed to treating this as a straight drama?
I think there’s a lot of comedy in Play also, but they are situations that we’re not used to handling, so we are not allowed to laugh about the kids in Play. But people that are wealthy, living in a luxury hotel, we’re allowed to laugh at them. Life is a comic tragedy. [Laughs] It’s a comedy with a tragic ending; we’re all going to die. I really like when scenes are horrifying in one moment, and humorous in the next. The audience often doesn’t know how to react.

You’ve said your previous films are more conceptual, but this one appeals more to emotions. What made you decide to go down that road with this film?
I guess there are so many things happening inside the characters in Force Majeure that I had to get closer to them. I had to focus on the face more. In my other films the directing was like “If you go over here or stand over here, do this,” but here the actors had to take much more responsibility over the characters. So I guess it was something natural with the topic of the film.

There’s a level of intense precision to the film. I wanted to know about your preparation process. Are you very meticulous about preparing the film in advance?
Yes, I do quite [a bit] but…I mean, every day on set we’re shooting a new scene. I have to rethink and re-evaluate what I thought before and make new decisions. For me it’s very important that I know what the framing should be, and which location and actor that we [use in] the scene, and the acting. I must have a clear view on that, but as soon as we start shooting I immediately understand, “Okay, I have to rethink.” So no matter how much you prepare, shooting is a struggle because you [can be] so insecure. And if you’re not true to your sensibility then it’s a very dangerous moment in filmmaking. You have to be true to your sensibility. If you feel something is wrong here, you can say “I don’t know what it is, maybe try to play it more in this way.” Shooting is a very hard process, it takes a lot of energy. It’s like a war. [Laughs]

Force Majeure (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) runs for his life, ditching his wife and two children. Luckily the avalanche doesn’t harm anyone, but for Tomas’ family there are severe, possibly irreparable damage.

Splitting the film up into 5 parts, one for each day of the vacation, Östlund details the fallout from the avalanche scare. Ebbe (Lisa Loven Kongsli), Tomas’ wife, isn’t able to comprehend her husband’s selfish action (or his denial of it), and Tomas slowly realizes his role as patriarch is slowly getting phased out. The most surprising thing about Force Majeure is its sense of humour; for a film exploring the destruction of gender and family roles, it’s really funny. That’s because Östlund sees the absurdity in these roles, something he highlights hilariously through Tomas’ masculinity receiving one blow after another.

With gorgeous, precise cinematography, Östlund’s film feels like the arrival of a new, major European arthouse talent. Force Majeure is smart, funny, and bound to get viewers talking afterward.