Background
Aschan grew up on a farm in Vejbystrand with parents who originally came from Russia.
Aschan grew up on a farm in Vejbystrand with parents who originally came from Russia.
At the age of twelve, she moved to Gothenburg and then studied at a boarding school in England. After that she studied at Stockholms Filmskola between 1989 and 1999, and at Den Danskes Filmskole in Denmark from 2001 to 2005 to become a director
During her studies, she became known for the commercials Fuck the Rapist!, a number of commercial films about a rape-protection consisting of an awl-clad tampon. Her short films In Transit and Goodbye Bluebird, which were made during the same time, have been shown at different film festivals. In 2009, she was a director"s assistant at Dramaten and directed the Danish television series Thea & leoparden for DR"s child television section.
The series has also been broadcast in Sweden and several other countries.
The three-part series is about a girl who pretends to be a leopard. Aschan has stated that she likes to use animal parables in her productions to make it more clear about human behavioural patterns.
In 2011, Aschan was awarded the Stockholm Film Festival"s newly created long-film scholarship of 5 million Swedish kronor (about €550,000, ₤480,000, or $770,000 in 2011) for her new project, Det vita folket, a science fiction-inspired story about the camps where the government places foreigners that are awaiting deportation. Aschan declined the money as she did not feel that her project fell under the rules of the award.
Aschan has described Det vita folket as a space epos with inspiration from the horror film The Shining.
The film had its premiere in 2015. At the 2016 Guldbaggen Awards, Aschan was filmed in the audience giving the finger and saying "Fuck You" to Swedish cinematographer Gösta Reiland. Linda Wassberg, who had filmed Det vita folket, was also nominated in the same category, and Aschan called it a "spontaneous reaction" to Wassberg losing to Reiland.