Based on the first book in Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium trilogy, and set in contemporary Sweden, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo stars the popular Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist hired by a wealthy businessman to investigate the disappearance of his niece 40 years earlier. Blomkvist – with the help of the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rapace) – links the disappearance to a number of grotesque murders and begins to unravel a dark and appalling family history.

For the uninitiated, the Millennium novels are probably the biggest international phenomenon to emerge from Sweden since ABBA, and director Niels Arden Oplev finds some elegant visual shortcuts for Larsson’s exposition-heavy prose in this accessible, attractive thriller. And yes, the inevitable Hollywood remake is due in 2011.

Cambridge Film Festival Programme