Film Review: The Swedish Connection
- athenianprint
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
By Rania Kamel
THE SWEDISH Connection is set in Sweden during World War II. This movie is only an hour and half yet is full of action and intrigue, and was directed by Marcus Olsson and Therese Ahlbeck. It is entirely in Swedish, with some German, subtitled in English.
It follows the main character, Gösta Engzell, a bureaucrat who is the head of the legal department of the Swedish foreign ministry. In the midst of the war, Sweden was surrounded by Nazi occupation, but their neutrality saved them.
The central conversation of the movie is diplomacy and we get to see all the delicate conversations between the many Swedish bureaucrats and the Nazi government. Gösta Engzell plays ed a fairly small role in the Foreign ministry, with his office put in the basement surrounded by squeaky pipes, and an insalubrious environment. His mission within this building is undermined and his team are feeling quite defeated as their efforts are overlooked.
However, the movie takes an interesting turn. Nazi Germany started to target jewish citizens in all of the Nordic countries, including Swedish citizens in Norway or Denmark. Engzell and his team decide to make this their entire mission to save every single one of them by finding bureaucratic loopholes. They create a new policy by eradicating the visa to enter Sweden to enable Jewish people to find refuge in Sweden.
This movie is truly fantastic. The cinematography and the color grading are as beautiful as the story. A movie coming out in this particular political climate is so important to diversify our understanding of history from all communities: the greatest power that we have is education. Watch movies, read books, articles and most importantly talk
with people with different lived experiences.
Overall it was a great and educational watch !
