Torrents? Downloading movies from the Internet? The Pirate Bay? Every self-respecting film programmer panics after hearing these words



That is why it is a bit paradoxical that this program of Swedish films includes the documentary TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard by Simon Klose, which ends with the message “Please, share this film online”. And that is how it really was because just one day after its premiere at the 63rd Berlinale, this film became available to everyone online. Behind its enigmatic title hides the recently switched off legendary Swedish platform for downloading movies and music. It is the reason of many headaches to the Hollywood industry, which is reincarnated in the character of the attorney Monique Wadstead who takes on the role of the villain. On the other hand, the “good guys” are the three internet activists who started Pirate Bay - Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Peter Sunde, as well as their silent partner, business man and investor Carl Lundstrom. Klose’s film is primarily interesting from a phenomenon discourse, while organizers of round tables are mostly focused on the problem of copyright, which the film touches upon, as well as on judges who do not make a difference between a megabyte and megabit.

While the opening scenes in Klose’s documentary include Volvo cars and cables in close-ups and evoke the aesthetics of full-blooded spy-films in the manner of Coppola’s The Conversation, virtuoso Mikael Marcimain (Call Girl) also uses a similar set of film cameras, tape recorders, wiretapping and tracking devices, in the tradition of Pollack and Pakula. His aim is to show how behind a cold but orderly society there lie those famous underground currents full of politicians who advocate women’s rights but do not hesitate to engage in sexual activities with underage nymphets. The author’s almost maniacal relationship to costumes and set design owe quite a bit to Alfredson’s film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, with the emphasis on the “tailor” – starring the permanently excellent Pernilla August. A similar ambiance is depicted in Axel Petersen’s Avalon, with the exception of replacing Abba and the hedonism of the 1970’s with Roxy Music and the hedonism of 1980’s incarnated in the character of a dried-up playboy who is attempting to open an exclusive club in the posh resort town of Bastad. However, his dream project is failing because of an accident – death of a Lithuanian worker on the construction site. Therefore, Bryan Ferry’s famous song becomes an ode to growing old and evanescence, while the author tries to cleanse his hero’s suffering from any psychological constraints.

Similar to Marcimain’s film, documentary Palme directed by Maud Nycander and Kristine Lindstrom, traces the lost time of Swedish politics. We are again in Petersen’s 1980’s but this time we follow a true story – the unsolved mystery of Olof Palme’s assassination. Obviously, Palme’s stroll down Stockholm’s streets with the North-Vietnamese ambassador enraged the Americans. The authors of the documentary also used some previously unreleased Super 8 footage of the politician’s family life. Film veteran Jan Troell also deals with a real-life person; his biopic The Last Sentence is a story about the journalist Torgny Segerstedt, a fierce critic of Nazism in the times when Sweden attempted to keep its political neutrality. Troell attempts to combine the political and intimate and while the way in which he observes the hero’s love triangle is closer to Bergman, his political rebellion is presented more in the manner of a slapstick (again starring the great Pernilla August, but in a completely different role than the one in Marcimain’s Call Girl, now as the Jewish owner of newspaper for which Segerstedt wrote).

Common threads in this program are real-life stories as well as motives of freedom of speech and censorship – evident in the cases of The Pirate Bay’s hackers and the protagonists of Gritten’s activist documentary Big Boys Go Bananas!. It is in fact a sequel to his previous film Bananas! that focused on a group of Nicaraguan banana farm workers who accused the Dole Food Company corporation for use of an illicit pesticide after which the company asked for the ban of this film’s distribution. (Dragan Rubeša)