18/08/2011

Swedish actor Lars-Erik Berenett (now 68) will return to the screen as police detective Roland Hassel, ten years after he was last seen in the role. In Hassel 12 he is retired, but still trying to get his hands on the $10 million reward for clearing up the 1986 unsolved murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.

The brain-child of extremely prolific Swedish author Olov Svedelid – ”I’ll write books still I am 100 years old, and then learn to play golf” – Hassel was the star of ten television films (1986-1992) and a feature (2000). Before he died in 2008, Svedelid allowed the Swedish writer-director Måns Månsson to use the character in a film that was not based on one of his own 29 Hassel novels.

For Hassel 12, his feature debut, Månsson – acclaimed for his 2008 documentary, H:r Landshövding (Mr Governor) [+see also:
trailer
film profile] - assigns the pensioned copper to the assassination of Palme, who was shot and killed in the streets of Stockholm on February 28, 1986, when he and his wife were on their way home from the cinema. After 25 years, the identity of the assassin(s) is still unknown.

”The murder remains a trauma in Swedish society,” explained Berenett, who stars with Lennart Dahlgren in a cast that also includes former police, private investigators, Säpo security service agents and even criminals. From Månsson’s original screenplay, mixing fact and fiction, Hassel 12 is produced by Martin Persson and Charlotte Most for Anagram Production.

Launched by Swedish actors Anders Jansson and Johan Wester, Anagram was joined by film producer Martin Persson as co-owner and managing director in 2006. Hassel 12 will be domestically released on February 28, 2012, by Scanbox Entertainment Sweden.