Trailer for Second Class.
Edvardus and Arturas travel by ferry from Lithuania to northern Sweden for work. On board, they meet a Lithuanian-Swedish filmmaking team. The last thing they want is to appear on film, for fear of perpetuating media stereotypes of migrant labourers as pitiable or guilty of stealing jobs. These men don’t want to be seen or heard complaining, wanting, struggling. They hope to make enough money for a car, an apartment, to start a family, and don’t want to rock the boat. But the filmmakers erode the men’s protective machismo and tease out stories about their home lives and how they feel about being considered cheap labour. The men share their vulnerabilities and vanities in ways that only come from genuine trust. Second Class is a patient character study of rare intimacy that distils the tension between its male subjects and female filmmakers into equal parts sexy chase and frustrating power struggle.