13/09/2024 - Frida Kempff crafts an affectionate biopic on the life aquatic of Sally Bauer, who swam her way straight out of the restrained 1930s

Already in her Cannes-awarded 2010 short Bathing Mickey, director Frida Kempff (Knocking [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Frida Kempff
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interview: Frida Kempff
film profile] is exactly that.

The “torpedo” moniker is highly appropriate when it comes to Sally Bauer (1908-2001), the Swedish swimming sensation who took on a number of long-distance challenges, usually succeeding with flying colours. With no Olympic medal or world championship title to her name – a world war getting in the way of things could have played a significant part – she’s gradually been confined to relative obscurity, even nationally. In her time, though, she was a big kahuna, and her 1939 English Channel crossing (as the fourth woman ever to do so; she also repeated the feat in 1951) almost made her a female Charles Lindbergh of the waters, at least nationally. There’s a school and a train named after her, a novel and a play written about her, and now, a feature film focusing on her.

Basing their narrative on a mix between authentic and fictional events and characters, Kempff and co-writer Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten (Beyond [+see also:
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In Josefin Neldén (The Restaurant, Border [+see also:
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interview: Ali Abbasi
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The Swedish Torpedo is a Swedish-Estonian-Finnish-Belgian co-production staged by Momento Film, and co-produced by Amrion, Velvet Films, Inland Film Company, Film i Väst, TV4, SVT, RTBF and Proximus. Its world sales are handled by Urban Sales.