Redoubt [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: John Skoog
ficha de la película] tells the curious and very real story of Karl-Göran Persson (1894-1975), a Swedish farm worker who spent a fair share of the latter half of his life – which coincided with the Cold War – turning his house into a fortress against enemy attacks. Director John Skoog (Ridge [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película]) now tells his remarkable story in a film starring the no-less-remarkable Denis Lavant and world-premiering in the New Directors section of the 73rd San Sebastián International Film Festival.

Cineuropa: Every country has its local legends, and now and again, these stories get to travel, not least via cinema. An extra fascinating thing about Karl-Göran Persson is that he’s more or less unknown also in Sweden. How did you come to hear about him?
John Skoog: Partly thanks to the fact that he’s from an area quite close to where I grew up. My parents knew of him and his house, and we would take Sunday rides to look at it in the early 1990s – my parents would take pictures. The place is quite hard to find, and the roads are old, so we had to stop and ask for directions. And every local who would help us would also tell us an anecdote about Karl-Göran. I was around eight at the time, and these little stories have haunted me ever since. When I later studied art in Germany, I started creating what would go on to be an exhibition around 2013-14, where I also did a short film, based on interviews with people who’d met him. The short only had some fragments from these interviews, which really told a strong story, I felt. They are now the foundation of this movie’s script. But you’re absolutely right: he’s hardly known at all.

As his stand-in on celluloid, you have chosen none other than Denis Lavant. What led you to this choice? And was Lavant really the first name you thought of?
I wanted to make Karl-Göran legendary and mythical, rather than social-realistic, which could have been interesting as well. But for my vision, I couldn’t think of a single Swedish actor who would fit the bill. I didn’t want a non-professional, because the part demanded a professional. So yes, Denis was the first and only choice, despite him being French and all.

How did he react when you approached him?
Firstly, I decided to try to get hold of him already before I’d started on the script. By chance, I got his email address and wrote him a long message, describing my idea in great detail and attaching pictures of Karl-Göran and his house. “This is how I’d like to see you,” I wrote. A little later, a reply dropped in: “Dear John, can you please write in French?” So I got it translated. New reply: “I’d very much like to be part of this adventure.” This was around 2020, and I still hadn’t written a line. He was then along during the whole scriptwriting process and often anticipated my ideas – very organically at that. We talked about the art of Henry Darger and Kafka’s The Burrow, which he’d already narrated a French audiobook version of. Interestingly, he had no practical experience of tools; he’d hardly ever held a hammer in his hand, let alone mixed any cement. But he’ll just look at someone handling a tool, and then make his own version of it, very believably – he has a true superpower.

How did he take to the Swedish language?
He practised and practised with my mother, who has a distinct southern accent, real Scanian. And although he’ll never pass for the real thing, when we held a test screening for a group of Danes, they were under the impression that he spoke some ancient provincial dialect. On the whole, I found him wholly appropriate for the part. His Frenchness worked tremendously well when it came to portraying this loner and outsider – a bit of an alien, really.

The film’s timeline is a fleeting 1960s-1970s period, when Sweden was a firmly non-aligned, neutral country. Today, as Redoubt premieres, Sweden is a NATO member. Any reflections on this development?
We’ve talked about a “Redoubt curse”. When we did the 2014 short, Russia invaded Crimea. When we started on the feature around 2021, we never expected a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a little later, along came Swedish NATO membership. In 2018, for the first time since 1991, the In Case of War pamphlet is again being distributed to Swedish households, and the most recent version appeared in 2024. Almost systematically, this historical film has gained a highly topical dynamic.