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The films starts with Lilya running desperately towards a motorway bridge, with a factory belching smoke in the background, to a soundtrack of aggressive rock by Rammstein. The film then looks back on how she ended up there.
Lilya's mother tells her they are emigrating to the USA with her boyfriend, but at the last minute Lilya is left behind, in the care of her aunt. A forced move into a squalid flat is only the beginning, and a succession on miseries are heaped upon Lilya, as her friend betrays her to save her own reputation, a gang viciously abuse her, and she is forced into prostitution to get by. One glimmer of hope is her friend Volodya ( Atrtyom Bogucharsky ), abused and rejected by his parents, with whom she forms a tender protective relationship. Another glimmer of hope is Andrei ( Pavel Ponomaryov ), who becomes her boyfriend and offers her a job in Sweden. But all is not what it seems, and only bad things await Lilya when she arrives there.
The film is set in an un-named 'former republic of the Soviet Union'; the 'Soviet' scenes were filmed in Tartu in Estonia. The Swedish scenes were filmed in Malm%F6 .
The film is extremely powerful and moving. Lukas Moodysson told audiences at the 2002 London Film Festival that he hoped the film would make them want to change the world for the better. Despite its bleak nature, Moodysson claims that the film is about the power of God, and shows how the human spirit clings to optimism even in the face of the most terrible adversity.
Swedish films