World-premiering at the 49th Göteborg Film Festival and enjoying a theatrical run before its 19 February worldwide Netflix release, The Swedish Connection is being given quite a build-up, and quite rightly. Thérèse Ahlbeck and Marcus Olsson’s exposé of an unlikely but very real Swedish World War II hero is an illustrious venture, brimming with top local talent.

They do exist, these Swedish World War II heroes, even at times being played on celluloid by the likes of Orson Welles as Raoul Nordling in Is Paris Burning? or William Holden as Eric Erickson in The Counterfeit Traitor. Essentially unsung, save for a few measly Wikipedia paragraphs, is the legacy of Gösta Engzell, a mid-level foreign affairs bureaucrat whose expansion of assorted regulatory loopholes offered sanctuary on Swedish soil for those of Jewish descent. The Swedish Connection is writing-directing duo Ahlbeck-Olsson’s creative account of this creative accountant.

In 1942, neutral-declared Sweden, surrounded by occupied territory, more or less willingly puts on a good face towards the Nazi machinery, supplying iron ore, letting German troops travel freely through the country and keeping the press in check regarding critical opinion. The emerging death camp rumours are initially taken with a pinch of salt, and border controls are rigorously inhospitable, particularly to those with “J”-stamped passports. A distinct shift occurs in late 1942, when Norwegian Jews are sent away on a cargo ship – destination Auschwitz, it will be evident – including some with Swedish kinship or citizenship (partly referencing the “connection” of the title), which prompts the Swedish authorities to request their release. The operation is fruitful. Gradually, and often quite sophisticatedly, regulations and policies are explored, bent and reformed, ultimately bringing in tens of thousands of refugees from the neighbouring countries and across Europe.

The HQ of this cunning planning operation is depicted as the least palatial room of the Foreign Affairs palace in the heart of Stockholm, a scruffy basement office with a heart of its own, beating through pile after pile of documents, each one seen as an actual person by Engzell and his trusty staff. Engzell is the “connection” (also partly referring to the title) to the officials upstairs and, by extension, to the envoys on foreign ground. Göran von Otter, Kurt Gerstein, Dag Hammarskjöld, Adolf Eichmann and other catalysts of the time pass through, including Raoul Wallenberg, another “much-sung” Swedish hero, whose operations Engzell’s ground work paved the way for.

The aesthetics, mood and tempo recall the approach on The Death of Stalin [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], and the ensemble is a proper who’s who of the Swedish comedy elite. International audiences should find historical interest and plentiful entertainment here, finely balanced with moments of sincere emotion. Domestic comedy virtuoso Henrik Dorsin (seen in Triangle of Sadness [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ruben Östlund
intervista: Ruben Östlund
scheda film]) plays Engzell as a cousin-in-spirit to Alec Guinness’s fussy clerk in The Lavender Hill Mob and Michael Palin’s everyday Monty Python superhero Bicycle Repairman.

Two of Engzell’s sons were in the audience at the Göteborg gala screening. Their father lived to be 100 and hardly ever spoke of his deeds. Had he done so, it would probably have been something along the lines of “It’s all in a day’s work, guv.”

The Swedish Connection was produced by Netflix.