Agneta Elers-Jarleman is a director and playwright, working in film, theatre, television and radio.

For her film Beyond Sorrow, Beyond Pain she received many film prizes, for example the Swedish Oscar (Guldbagge) for best film, the international prize Prix d´Italia, the Prize of the Public in Toronto, prize in Paris and it was selected to many film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, London) and showed in many countries both in television and in movie theatres. In Sweden the film opened for a vivid debate about human values and has been much used in medical training schools.

Agneta has also been occupied with questions on female creativity. Her drama film about Ester Ellqvist, a woman and painter who lived in the beginning of the 20th century, has been showed in many film festivals and received prizes (in Paris and San Francisco). 

In the theatre Agneta has written and directed many plays and often chosen to tell about forgotten female artists. Her own direction of her play Little Karin Boye has toured in festivals in 7 countries, received prizes, and also been translated and played in other countries in new stagings (Finland, Norway, Lithuania and Sweden).

Her own staging of her play about the Swedish author August Strindberg, Helluvaguy - a study on male attitudes- has been touring in 18 different countries, not only in Europe, but also in USA and in Africa and received prizes for most original manuscript and best acting. It has been played in new stagings in many theatres in Sweden, translated and played in Finland, Denmark, Hungary and Tokyo in Japan and is going to have its first opening night in USA 2012. 

The musical Kittycats (for children) has been a tremendous success, translated to 14 different languages and performed in more than 38 theatres in different countries. Among the translations you can find languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.

Agneta: "It’s strange. Now I am here in Rome under a golden sun surrounded by all these memoires of antic glory and I’m writing on a play about two women who used to live in Västerbotten, a very northern part of Sweden. These women lived in a landscape of snow and long dark winter nights. They were both painters and had this great love and longing for art. Just inspired by my sojourn in Rome I am now writing a sort of dream scene, where these women wonderfully are making part of Michelangelo’s famous "Creation of Adam" in Sistine Chapel. I don´t think that Michelangelo would mind!"

Artist-in-residence May 2012