01/04/2021 - David Herdies and Georg Götmark’s documentary, set to take part in Visions du Réel’s main competition, zooms in on the changing face of conflict in an increasingly technocratic world

A bored military contractor in Nevada pining for his return, an American war photographer in Afghanistan attempting to capture the horrors and a Swedish engineer developing AI for the defence industry. Three disparate individuals in three disparate locations provide the unlikely focus of Bellum – The Daemon of War [+see also:
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Zooming in on topics from the digital realms of coding and silicon to the physical and psychological front lines, directors David Herdies and Georg Götmark have crafted a provocative meditation on the ways in which Western nations portray the narratives of war, which ultimately poses the question: who, if not everyone, is complicit?

The film is set to premiere in the international feature competition of this year’s virtual edition of Visions du Réel, unspooling from 15-25 April. Herdies and Götmark are both experienced producers and directors, here making their first joint effort.

Talking about the project, Herdies told Cineuropa: “What interested us was the fact that the people in this film are all part of the war machine in some way, and in different ways. So at first glance, they seemed like disparate characters, but by juxtaposing them, there was also something that happens in the friction, in the collision between those different characters and stories. They are connected because each person’s actions have repercussions on other people’s lives all the time. That chain of actions and reactions was a key element for the film and how we constructed the movie. Also, we wanted to film from where we are standing and decided to focus on these voices from Western nations, to stay with the people who are pushing the narrative of the war forward. We wanted to make a film where you didn’t see any drones and you didn’t see any victims in that sense. We wanted to see the everyday bureaucracy behind war.”

Bellum – The Daemon of War was produced by David Herdies and Michael Krotkiewski for Sweden’s Momento Film in co-production with Axel Arnö for SVT, Peter Possne for Film i Väst and Helle Faber for Denmark’s Made In Copenhagen. The feature was supported by the Swedish Film Institute, the Danish Film Institute, the Nordisk Film & TV Fond, the European Union’s Creative Europe - MEDIA programme, the Lindholmen Science Park and the Swedish Arts Council. German sales agent Deckert Distribution is currently in charge of its world sales.

Check out our exclusive trailer for Bellum – The Daemon of War below: