Only the Devil Lives Without Hope reunites the strong creative team behind Becoming Zlatan and Every Face Has a Name: director Magnus Gertten, DoP Caroline Troedsson and editor Jesper Osmund.

The film is the empowering story of Uzbek political refugee Dilya, living with her parents and children in Sweden. The young woman became a human rights activist the day her brother Iskandar was thrown in the notorious Jaslyk prison in Uzbekistan, accused of being a terrorist.

For years she challenged the authoritarian regime of former president Islam Karimov and fled to Sweden, only to realise that the regime who took her brother was closer than she could ever imagine. Indeed, her own husband turned against her as an informer on Uzbek refugees.

The film was produced by Gertten’s own company Auto Images in co-production with Norway’s Upnorth Film, SVT, Film i Skåne, in association with NRK, Yle, DR, VRT, Current TimeTV, with support from the Swedish Film Institute, the Norwegian Film Institute, Midtnorsk Filmsenter, Fritt Ord, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Nordvision, Creative Europe Media and the City of Malmö.

The film was selected for CPH:DOX’s F:ACT competition section and was due to have its North American premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs (April 30-May 10 ), now postponed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. We speak to Gertten.

The film has been a collateral victim of Covid-19 as it's been unable to meet a cinema audience both at CPH:DOX and Hot Docs. How was your experience of launching the film online at CPHDOX and how are you preparing the Hot Docs virtual presentation?
Magnus Gertten: It’s obviously a tough period to premiere a film. We’ve been selected to both CPH:DOX and Hot Docs, which usually is a perfect start for a documentary. Now the world is turned upside down, and we need to adapt to the new situation.

Producer Ove Rishøj Jensen and I decided early on to go along with the online initiatives of the festivals. It’s better to be active and make as much buzz as possible in this situation. It’s a bit depressing to miss the personal meetings with the audience and industry people; everything is challenging. But you need to keep up your optimism. We haven’t had a proper premiere party yet, which is something everyone in the team really misses. But it will come, as soon as things open up!

When did you first meet your protagonist, human right activist Dylia and have the idea for the film?
MG: I met Dilya early 2016, just for research purposes. I wanted to hear about her brother who was in jail, accused of being a terrorist. At the end of that first meeting she revealed her dramatic, personal story. That was a big moment for me. Then I realised I had a film.

What was the political situation in Uzbekistan at the time? Was the dictator Islam Karimov still in power?
MG: The old dictator Islam Karimov was still in power when we started to shoot the film. He was the one who initiated the brutal war on terrorism. He encouraged torture as a method of police investigation and in the prisons. He died late 2016, which led to changes in the regime and a certain degree of optimism for the future of Uzbekistan.

There are two main storylines: the activist Dilya, fighting for her brother's release from prison in Uzbekistan, and the unbelievable story of espionage, involving her own husband. Tell us about the process that went into building the script in a chronological order, as a pure thriller, with twists and turns?
MG: I have never told a story like this before and it wasn’t easy. It’s always a challenge when a big part of the film is backstory, and you don’t have much footage from back then. As you mention, our ambition was to create as much thriller of the material as possible. We had to try out different solutions during a very long editing period.

Luckily, we had the ongoing storyline of Dilya’s struggle for her brother, where things started to happen after a year into the shooting. It’s always important with a ”motor” in a film. With a complicated story like this, you need a strong team behind you. Editor Jesper Osmund, editing consultant Niels Pagh Andersen and producer Ove Rishøj Jensen were essential in this process.

What was unique about your collaboration with DOP Caroline Troedsson and Jesper Osmund with whom you've made Becoming Zlatan and Every Face has a Name?
MG: Making documentaries is definitely about building a strong team. I tend to hang on to the great team players and talented artists that I’ve worked with before, like Jesper Osmund and Caroline Troedsson. They are also cool human beings, which is important. You need to work with people that you love. Both Jesper and Caroline are very open-minded and willing to test out different artistic solutions, which is an essential quality in filmmaking.

You've had access to amazing materials, with footage from Dylia's own home movies, a lot of TV archives, your own material and investigative journalistic work about the country. Was it challenging to combine the creative documentary with the investigative journalistic elements to make sure the audience would be fully immersed?
MG: It was the most challenging research process I’ve been through. Our main researcher Sebastian Claesson did a terrific job. A part of this documentary is for sure related to investigative journalism. I have many years of experience in journalism, so the knowledge from earlier days was useful in the making of this film.

Dylia says twice in the film 'Only the devil lives without hope'. Can you tell us about this saying that turned into the title for the film?
MG: We came up with the title after going through all the translations from Uzbek to English. Dilya often uses that expression. After a while, we realised that this typical Uzbek proverb in a great way sums up the story. It’s a film about never giving up hope. Dilya has spent more than twenty years now, fighting for her brother. The expression talks about hope, as well as it mentions ”the devil”. And there’s a devil in the film...

On a production level, how difficult was it to put the financing together?
MG: We had a decent budget, thanks to producer Ove Rishøj Jensen. It’s always a struggle to finance a documentary, but the financiers were curious about our story early on.

Who handles sales and how and when will the film premiere in Sweden and In Norway?
MG: CAT & Docs is our sales agent, which we are happy about. It’s hard to make predictions for the Swedish and Norwegian premieres, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for screenings this autumn.

Ultimately, what do you hope the audience will take home after watching your film?
MG: Hopefully the audience will get inspired by Dilya’s struggle for her brother. She’s paying a high price for her struggle, but stills keeps her hope and courage alive. I’m also happy to be able to introduce a story related to the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. It’s a region we rarely see in documentaries.

What else are you working on?
MG: I’m always working on a couple of projects in different stages. Hopefully I can even premiere a new film next year. If the pandemic is over by then!