Director Mark Cousins (I Am Belfast), cinematographer Christopher Doyle (In The Mood for Love) and musician Neneh Cherry (in her big screen debut) team up for this superbly inventive docu-style fiction and heartfelt love letter to the Swedish capital.

Jazz singer Neneh Cherry, whose velvet tones narrate this lyrical portrait, plays Alva Achebe, a 47 year-old architect obsessed with the power that buildings and cityscapes have on our being. Gripped by post-traumatic depression from the trauma of an accident one year previously, she paces the streets of her once beloved hometown trying to escape the past and regain the feelings that her surroundings once inspired. Taking in the immigrant experience, her relationship with her father and Stockholm’s recent history, her wanderings inadvertently take her back to the scene of the tragedy, where she’s forced on a journey that is both reflective and restorative.

Prompted by what he saw as a paucity of films about this magnificent city, Cousins’ brilliant blurring of the lines between documentary and fiction presents Stockholm as a kind of city symphony, and makes beautiful strides towards addressing this imbalance. Elegant and introspective, his poetic and music-infused portrait is a heartfelt exploration of grief and recovery.

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