ANIARA is the story of one of the many spaceships used for transporting Earth's population to their new home-planet Mars. But just as Aniara leaves the ruined Earth, she collides with an asteroid and is knocked off her course. Aniara's passengers slowly realise that they'll never be able to return; they will continue onwards through an empty and cold universe forever.

The Swedish Nobel prize winner Harry Martinsson wrote "Aniara" in 1956. The novel has been translated into a number of different languages, including Danish, Finnish, English, Russian, Czech, Arabic, Japanese and most recently Chinese. It has been staged as an opera and several theatrical productions, but has never before been filmed. In Aniara's inexorable journey towards destruction there is a warning that cannot be emphasised enough. There's only one Earth. We have only one life. So, we have to take responsibility for our actions and constantly guard our environment and our humanity. If we don't, Earth will soon be a ...

Pella Kågerman, educated at the Royal Institute of Art, and Hugo Lilja, educated at the National College of Film & Television, have collaborated since 2009 and together they have made Hugo’s graduation film THE UNLIVING (2010), which demonstrated their unique ability to make arthouse sci-fi on a small budget, thus attracting huge interest from Hollywood, British Film4 and European arthouse producers who developped it into a feature. The film won numerous awards world-wide - amongst other places - Berlinale, Stockholm and Clermont-Ferrand.

Selected filmography:
2014 - STORMAKSTIDEN, short
2014 - VÄKTARE. short
2011 - SUPPORTERN, short
2010 - EN DAG PÅ LANDET, short
2010 - THE UNLIVING, short
2009 - ALTONA. short
2009 - BODY CONTACT, short
2008 - HOME SERVICE, short