Ahead of the March 17 world premiere of G – 21 scenes from Gottsunda, Business Doc Europe spoke to Swedish doc debutant Loran Batti. In this deeply intimate doc, the filmmaker from Uppsala’s notorious titular suburb, grapples with the desire to move away but is torn by loyalty to his childhood friends who lead a criminal life. Making the film tested his sense of belonging and identity, he explains.
In his director notes, Batti states G21 “is an important film for all of Sweden.”
“Right now, I think people are wondering what’s happening in Sweden, [the country of] Ikea, Volvo, the engineers, the ‘perfect people’ following rules. I think we’ve got the highest number of firearm-related casualties in Europe. So this film is important because it’s so easy to say that ‘someone is a killer, and did this or that’ but you don’t see the people behind the headlines.”
However, Batti didn’t realise the wide scope of his film from the start: “I was first [involved] in the movie and later on, maybe when I had a first rough cut, I thought I had to add something…not to make people understand, but to open that ‘door’ for them, so that they could just watch through this ‘window’ and see our world.”
“When I took a one-year course at a documentary film school, we had our final exam and [the assignment] was to make our own movie. Then I found a Super8 camera in the attic of the school…Then I came up with the idea of going back to Gottsunda and film two rolls with this Super8,” Batti reveals to BDE of film’s origins back in 2018. “It was [supposed to be] a very avant-garde essay film,” he adds. “Afterwards, I’ve just been slowly working on it, buying more Super8 cameras and rolls.”
Speaking about the idea of splitting the documentary in 21 scenes, he admits it was the idea of producer Göran Hugo Olsson, who made the highly successful The Black Power Mixtape (2011) “Everyone knows who he is, and all the big movies he’s made. [He helped me] when I had troubles in the editing room, when I’ve got a movie without a concept leading up to something, and [missing] all that structure… He came up with the idea of putting [it] into 21 scenes, so we wouldn’t give the audience any expectations. We’d just give them what we have. And that worked really well.”
The director used several Super8 cameras but also shot the doc with an old Canon handycam (“quite a large model which would allow a shotgun mic to be plugged in”) as well as his mobile phone.
Looking back at the entire creative process, Batti admits his lack of film education has been an obstacle but also a driving force. “Sure, I took a one-year documentary course but that didn’t give me full education. I went ‘intuitively’ with everything. So I was making the movie and learning how to record sound, how to shoot, how to handle analogue film… All of the technical stuff, I’ve learnt it by doing it. And [I’ve learnt] to edit as well.”
“Speaking about the spiritual and the human aspect, it was so hard for me to keep distant from the film, the project, the place and the subject. The film is [about] me, my friends, my home, my mother, my wife… It’s so hard to keep that distance, and when I talked with my friends who went to big film schools, they said they took [specific] courses focusing on this [aspect].”
“You work in a grey zone, and I’ve been in it since Day 1. Also, it’s been hard to make the movie while adapting to these hard things [happening in front on me], and to realise my friends had chosen that path. I thought that my boys didn’t want to be with me. When that happened, I was mad at them. But eventually I understood they did that [in order] to protect me.”
“I’m so happy that I’m finished,” says Batti sighing in relief, “for my wife and everyone involved. I learnt so much from this process and now I can move ahead.”
Two composers, Leo Goldmann and Johan Carøe, worked on scoring Batti’s film. “I come from the theatre world, and everything is done collectively. You’ve got a script, you’ve got your cast and everyone is involved in it. I came with that ‘collective mind’ when I spoke to Leo who made the opening score. I just suggested to look at the footage and then gave him feedback on what he was doing. That was the type of relationship I established with these guys. It’s been a beautiful collaboration. Actually, I didn’t have a vision in terms of music. They came up with great ideas, and we went back and forth to achieve this result.”
Batti struggles to quantify the amount of footage he has shot, but he said it might be in the region of 100-200 hours.
When asked whether he believes in the healing power of art, Batti tells us: “I totally agree, I think art can save someone’s life. I think art saved mine. If you truly get into this world, then you need to open up your feelings, and when you do that, something happens to you. Your moral compass gets bigger. [Focusing on artistic creation] makes more sense than just being a person who goes to work 9-5, goes to sleep and so on… It gave me direction, and makes [me] a better person every day…I understand myself much more, but also the society.”
So far, only two of the people involved in the film have watched the final cut. “One of my close friends watched it before he went to prison. He called me right away, and he told me I’ve made a great movie. These [people] like movies [and series] like Gomorrah, The Sopranos… He told me: ‘You’ve made something important and I hope that Sweden will understand this. You did a good job, brother.’ When he said that, I felt relieved. I thought they could understand it too.”
“When you make movies like these, ‘fluid’ in their genre, it’s hard for the audience to connect with them. I wanted to make this movie ‘available’ to anyone, not only for the art people, or schooled ones, but also for the kids from the block. Another friend watched and I heard him crying, and I started crying too. Tomorrow [at the world premiere], more people will watch it and I’m so nervous about it,” Batti ends.
