‘The Slingshot’

This bittersweet but warm 1993 account of growing up in Sweden as the child of socialist parents takes its title from the play toy fashioned by its ingenious 10-year-old hero Roland Schutt (Jesper Salen, pictured) from condoms his mother sells to her friends. Roland’s enterprise is doubly significant: As the film is based on an autobiographical novel, set in the ‘20s, it foreshadows Roland’s adult career as an inventor, and it reveals that Sweden was once far from the nation it is today. No wonder Roland’s mother is upset with him: Between 1910 and 1937, the dissemination of birth-control information was illegal in Sweden. The key significance of Roland’s story, told by writer Ake Sandgren in anecdotal fashion with humor and poignancy, is that it shows the bedrock importance of family life (TMC Sunday at 9:50 p.m.).