Ron­nie Sandahl

Ron­nie Sandahl (born 1984) is a Swedish screen­writer and dir­ect­or. He made a sig­ni­fic­ant break­through as a nov­el­ist at the age of 22 before trans­ition­ing to film.

Guld­bagge-awar­ded Swedish-Nor­we­gi­an dir­ect­ori­al debut, Under­dog (2015), star­ring Bianca Kron­löf as the lead act­ress, garnered much atten­tion and won numer­ous inter­na­tion­al fest­iv­al awards.

In recent years, Ron­nie has been work­ing on a film tri­logy explor­ing the psy­cho­lo­gic­al, polit­ic­al, and eco­nom­ic aspects of the sports world:

The first part, ten­nis film Borg vs McEnroe (2017) star­ring Shia LaBeouf and Sver­rir Gud­nason, was nom­in­ated for ten Guld­bagge awards and was the first Swedish film ever to open the Toronto Inter­na­tion­al Film Festival.

The second film in the tri­logy, Tigers (2021), is set in the Itali­an pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball industry. The film won numer­ous inter­na­tion­al awards, was nom­in­ated for five Guld­bagge awards and the Nor­d­ic Coun­cil Film Prize. It was named the best Swedish film of the year by crit­ics and was selec­ted as Sweden’s sub­mis­sion to the Oscars.

The final part of the sports tri­logy, Per­fect (planned to shoot in 2025), is an Amer­ic­an stu­dio film set in the bru­tal world of gym­nastics (acquired by Fox Search­light). Most recently, Ron­nie has cre­ated and writ­ten the TV series THE HELI­COPTER HEIST, Netflix’s biggest Scand­inavi­an pro­ject to date (dir­ec­ted by Daniel Espinosa).