Labor (Swedish director Tove Pils’ documentary receiving its international premiere at CPH:DOX) has had a very long gestation. Pils started filming in 2010, recording the lives of a group of people within San Francisco’s queer community.
The doc focuses on three main protagonists. Hanna, the narrator, is a young gay Swedish woman who has come to California, leaving her fretful girlfriend Emma behind in Europe. Chloe, whom she meets socially, is a dominatrix. Sex worker Cyd, who is a trans man, is an escort.
“For some years, I was just doing interviews…I wasn’t even sure for a long time that it was going to be these three people in the film,” Pils recalls the early stages of the film. This was a time of flux and transition for all of the characters. Their lives were changing. The director wasn’t sure how featuring in the documentary would affect them.
“I stopped filming for a couple of years because it was hard to move on,” Pils recalls early teething pains. After returning to Sweden and starting a Masters at Gothenburg University, the director began to work again on the project.
The decision to include Hanna’s voice-over and to tell the story from her perspective eventually gave Pils the creative freedom needed to complete the film.
“I was experimenting with how to weave it together with the interviews…it was pretty obvious that it [the voice-over] could help with people who are outside this [queer] community. It was a great way to get them to travel with Hanna and to see this community for the first time. It was also mirroring how it was for me. When I got there [in 2010], it was also the first time for me ” says Pils.
The director structured the film “almost like a hero’s journey, going away, looking for yourself. [Hanna] is, like, 25, having all these adventures and then coming back to Sweden.”
Hanna is voiced by actress Nina Jeppsson. One person watching the documentary speculated that the character (whose face is never seen) may actually be Pils herself.
“I can’t get into it…I’ll keep her anonymous,” the director responds when asked about Hanna’s back story and identity. “She was just one of the people I encountered [in San Francisco]. There were also a lot of my friends from Sweden who I met there too. The Queer community has these international capitals in a way, like San Francisco and Berlin.”
In the documentary, Hanna is taken under Chloe’s wing as she explores professional sex work.
Hanna, Chloe and Cyd don’t work with pimps or fixers. Their attitude toward the sex work is generally very positive. They describe it as “the most ethical work” there is and suggest that other regular jobs are more immoral.
Pils wanted the documentary to show how “class, privilege and housing affects working conditions, not just for sex workers. If you can’t advertise and you’re illegally in the country, you need a pimp to get your client.”
The characters in the documentary have more control of their environment. They’re not working on the streets. They’re well-paid. However, they face huge dilemmas regarding whether or not to tell their families about their work and how their future employment opportunities might be affected.
“I also don’t think the film is only about that. It’s about a lot of other things, like longing for being part of a community and exploring your sexuality,” Pils adds.
The documentary also reflects changing wealth and demographic trends in San Francisco itself. The liberal, bohemian city is gradually being taken over by wealthy tech entrepreneurs, working for companies like Google. House prices shoot up. Many within the Queer community are forced to leave and move to Oakland instead.
“Of course, everyone was already talking about it in 2010. It was already really clear but maybe not the extent how much it would affect all the Queers and everyone else living there,” Pils says of the gentrification of the city.
Labor was made through independent Stockholm-based production company Story (whose other credits include such high-profile docs as The Distant Barking Of Dogs and The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Producer Melissa Lindgren had first met Pils when they were students together in Gothenburg.
“I waited a long time before I wanted even to have a producer because I wanted it to be a more a process between me and the people I was filming,” the director says
Chloe and Cyd have seen early versions of the film. “I was very nervous to show [it to] them…they were really happy with the result,” Pils notes. “It also made them think about their life and what has changed. That, I think, is the best review you can get from someone, when it also makes them reflect about their lives and how it was in the beginning, who they were as people then, what they were hoping for and what their life is like now – all the choices they have made.”
As for Hanna, Pils remains coy. “It could be me and then I wouldn’t say of course. But that’s also something that I have been thinking a lot about. I want people understand that anybody around them can be a sex worker and you can’t expect them to be open…I think society in general is interested in who are the sex workers. People are greedy a little bit for people to come out [as sex workers] both to criticise them and also just to know,” Pils reflects on the prurient curiosity surrounding the subject. “It’s fine if people think it is me…as long as it is not something that distracts you too much when you are watching the film.”
Labor was produced through Story AB with support from The Swedish Film Institute, and Göteborgs stad in co-production with Film i Väst. Folkets Bio is handling the Swedish theatrical release.
