The Summer Book: Preview Club Wrap-Up

As part of the JBFC Preview Club, subscribers get an exclusive first look at the most interesting new indies and foreign films on our “New Releases” horizon. Every month, JBFC programmers present a special “secret” screening of an anticipated new film release before it is available to the public. After the screening, our programmers open the floor for a robust audience discussion and send Club members a wrap-up note with behind-the-scenes details and fun facts about the film they just watched.

As a special treat, we have decided to make these notes public. Beware, there may be spoilers!

Preview Club Wrap-up for The Summer Book, presented by JBFC Programming Coordinator Ian LoCascio on Sept. 5, 2025:

Hi all,

Thank you for another great Preview Club! This month’s film was The Summer Book, which is opening at the Burns on October 3rd, courtesy of our friends at Music Box Films.

The Summer Book had its world premiere at last year’s BFI London Film Festival, which is put on by the British Film institute. The film was directed by Charlie McDowell, a filmmaker whose previous work includes the 2014 film The One I Love and the 2022 film Windfall. McDowell also produced the upcoming film Lurker, which opens at the Burns today, and was a standout at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The Summer Book is adapted from a novel of the same name written in 1972 by the acclaimed Finnish author Tove Jannson. She is best known for writing the beloved “Moomin” books which center on the adorable Moomintroll, his friends, and his family. Jansson wrote the Moomin books from 1945, beginning with the book The Moomins and the Great Flood, up until 1970 when her final Moomin book, Moominvalley in November, was published. From this point onward, Jansson decided to begin writing for adults, a shift which she began with The Summer Book.

In the decades since Jansson finished writing the original Moomin books, Moomin has grown into a cultural force around the world thanks in part to a number of films, TV series, comic books, theme parks, and countless pieces of merchandise centering on Moomin. Like The Summer Book, Jansson’s original Moomin books are known for their warm, gentle spirit mixed with an inclination toward philosophizing about life, spirituality, and the natural environment. If you’re interested in learning more about Moomin, there is currently a worthwhile exhibit centered on Moomin at the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Another thing which The Summer Book (novel and film alike) shares with the Moomin book series is a strong biographical foundation. Moomin’s mother Moominmama and the grandmother character in The Summer Book (played by Glenn Close in the film), are both heavily inspired by Tove Jannson’s mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, an artist and bohemian who was a massive artistic inspiration for her daughter. It is for this reason that the end credits of the film feature clips of Jansson’s mother.

Signe Hammarsten-Jansson passed away in 1970, a loss which deeply affected her daughter. In addition to the influence of Jansson’s mother on the character of the grandmother in The Summer Book, it isn’t hard to see the ways in which the grief of Sophia, a girl who is mourning the loss of her mother, is also inspired by Jansson’s life.

The Scottish author Ali Smith has referred to The Summer Book novel as being a “masterpiece of microcosm,” a strength which I think has been beautifully carried over to the film. There is such universal wisdom to be found in the conversations between Sophia and her grandmother; conversations about life, loss, and a person’s relationship with the world around them.

The Summer Book has such affection and reverence for the natural world, and I love the warmth and tactility of its cinematography. The film was beautifully shot on 16mm film by Norwegian cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, who also shot Thomas Vinterberg’s Academy Award-winning film Another Round from 2020 and the 2021 film The Innocents, which was the directorial debut of The Worst Person in the World co-writer Eskil Vogt.

For any fans of The Worst Person in the World, you likely recognized Anders Danielsen Lie—who played Julie’s boyfriend Aksel in Worst Person—as the actor who plays Sophia’s father in The Summer Book. As an aside, I’m sending this wrap-up from the Toronto International Film Festival, where I just saw The Worst Person in the World director Joachim Trier’s newest film Sentimental Value, where Anders Danielsen Lie also makes a brief appearance, and which is truly excellent. We’ll be opening that film in November, and I highly recommend it!

Filmmaker Charlie McDowell is a lifelong fan of Moomin, which led him to discover The Summer Book in his 20s. McDowell has said that it resonated with him when he first read it, but it wasn’t until revisiting the book during the Covid pandemic that he decided to adapt it into a film. He met with Tove Jansson’s niece Sophia, who controls the estate, and after decades of nearly greenlit adaptations, she granted McDowell the rights to make the film.

McDowell said that, in casting the grandmother, his number one choice was Glenn Close, and he credits her coming on board with helping to get the film financed. While Glenn Close hadn’t read The Summer Book when McDowell first reached out, she was—and you may sense a trend here—a big fan of Moomin. After reading The Summer Book, she signed on to make the film and McDowell credits her for how dedicated she was to a rather challenging shoot.

Each day it took three hours for Glenn Close to have the prosthetics applied which transformed her into her 90-year-old character; she opted to sleep on the island, staying in the house they shot in without electricity or running water, so as to build a meaningful connection with the island.

As you saw, The Summer Book is not an especially plotty film, which I think makes it all the more important to have such a tangible central character in the grandmother. It also certainly helps to have one of our greatest living actresses play her, and I do think I could watch Glenn Close do just about anything.

I hope you enjoyed The Summer Book, and I’ll see you next time!

Best,

Ian

Couldn’t join us for Preview Club? The Summer Book opens at the Jacob Burns Film Center for a run on Friday, Oct. 3.