19/03/2014 - The Swedish Film Institute has supported six full-length documentaries, including Magnus Gertten and Stefan Berg’s portrait of Björn Afzelius

Fifteen years after his death, the legendary Swedish singer-songwriter Björn Afzelius is set to star in a new documentary, included in the six full-length productions that the Swedish Film Institute has backed to the tune of €1 million.

Afzelius is the subject of A Thousand Pieces, Swedish directors Magnus Gertten and Stefan Berg’s portrait of “a man full of contradictions: a singer of protest songs but also of sentimental ballads - a political activist who was also an incurable romantic". Swedish musician Mikael Wiehe – with whom Afzelius started the Hoola Bandoola Band in 1970 – and artist Marianne Lindberg de Geer will talk about his life and career in the Lennart Ström production for Auto Images. Afzelius, who sold more than 2.5 million albums, died in 1999, aged 52.

There is more music in Conquering China, Swedish writer-actor-director Johan Jonason’s depiction of a Swedish pop singer who leaves a Europe in crisis and heads to China with the aim of establishing himself as an artist. The melodic documentary about “the paradigm shifts taking place in the world right now” is produced by Anna Byvald for Silverosa Film.

I Am Dublin, by David Aronowitsch, Anna Persson and Ahmet Abdullahi, is the story of a young Somali boy, Ahmet, who came to Europe six years ago; now, in Dublin, he has got himself a job as an actor playing a part that mirrors his own life. Otherwise, he is one of the drifters unable to settle due to the EU’s Dublin Regulation. Annika Rogell will lead the Story AB production.

Swedish directors PeÅ Holmqvist and Suzanne Khardalian’s Camel follows Cecilia Uddén, Swedish Radio’s Middle East correspondent, at work in Cairo, where she has been living with her family for many years. Known as The Camel, she is the only person to have received Sweden’s most prestigious award for journalism on two occasions. Holmqvist will produce for his Holmqvist Film.

French author-actress-photographer Catherine Robbe-Grillet and her inner circle are depicted by Swedish director Lina Maria Mannheimer in The Ceremony, a biopic about love and friendship produced by Mathilde Dedye for French Quarter Film. Robbe-Grillet wrote most of her BDSM-related books under the name of Jean or Jeanne de Berg.

Swedish director Andreas Koefoed’s The Secret Flight follows a British arms dealer and a Danish activist on a flight about to drop four tons of weapons over West Bengal. The Brit is in fact working with MI5 to ensure the arrest of the Dane, but everything goes wrong. Tobias Lindholm has scripted the Erik Magnusson production for Anagram Film & TV.