Swedish producer director Viktor Nordenskjold discovered the refugee subjects for his new project Lust For Life (pitched earlier this week at the IDFA Forum) in unlikely fashion on the beach in Lesbos in Greece. He was there with The United Nations Commission on Human Rights. As he gazed over the sand, he couldn’t help but be struck that one of the young men struggling across the sand had the other on his shoulder.
“I met these two guys,” Nordenskiöld says of Syrian teenager Saeed, who can’t walk, and his friend and cousin Hazim. Having spotted the duo, he instantly approached them. “They were special in many ways, their desperation but also their kindness.”
Saeed and Hazim were “friends for life” who had vowed they would never be separated. They had already travelled far, leaving their families far behind them. Saeed’s wheelchair was no longer functional and so Hazim carried him.
In the end, the two Syrians ended up living in Germany where they became caretakers to Marius, a young German with cerebral palsy. Marius’s mother, Astrid, works closely with refugees, also features prominently in the film.
“It [the documentary] became this ‘who is carrying who’ story,” the director says of the film. There were obvious ironies. The Europeans felt that they were “helping” the Syrian refugees but once Hazim and Saeed started working with Marius, lines became very blurred. It became very hard to say who was “the burden” and who was “the giver.”
“Of course, it is political in that sense as well but the film is really about friendship, the interconnection between these three boys and also the mother of Marius,” the director says. He talks of the “warm, positive” atmosphere of the documentary, very different to the storytelling in many other films that follow refugees.
Lust For Life, made through Nordenskiöld’s company Freetown Films, is currently in production. One point of principle for the director is that all the protagonists “have agency.” They get to speak in their own voices and don’t have their stories “narrated” for them by outsiders or experts. Marius has trouble communicating but he is still heard, alongside the others.
Nordenskiöld has already been following his characters for seven years. They’ve all been through upheavals in their lives, getting and losing jobs, trying to improve their lives, having adventures and sometimes losing their way.
“One of the guys disappeared for a while, but this summer he returned to the group which was good for the film but fantastic for the reality,” Nordenskiöld says of Hazim whose long absence provoked anguish and soul-searching for Astrid and Saeed.
Mario Adamson’s Sisyfos Film has now come on board as co-producer. There has also been development support from the Swedish Film Institute. Given that much of the doc is set in Germany, Nordenskiöld is also looking for German co-producers.
Lust For Life is only one of the many projects the prolific Nordenskiöld has on the boil. He directed the 2018 doc, The Feminister, about former Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Margot Wallströms. More recently, he made Behind The Swedish Model (2022), looking at the controversial Swedish government’s response to COVID-19, in particular the work of public health boss Dr Anders Tegnell. (Both docs were sold by Autlook)
“How do you survive? You cannot finance yourself otherwise,” he says of the different projects he works on at once.
Nordenskiöld also likes the contrasts. When he was making The Feminister, he was filming with high level politicians at the United Nations Security Council one moment and then going back to work on Lust For Life with Saeed, Hazim and the disabled community in Hamburg. “That’s a contrast but also interesting.”
