The Swedish doc draws on a historic event unfolding in 1992, when more than 300 writers set sail on a Baltic cruise, dreaming of peace and unity.
Johan von Sydow’s new project, titled Ship of Dreams, will be pitched at Baltic Sea Docs next week. Every year, the Riga-based pitching forum, which runs from 1-6 September, welcomes over 100 non-fiction professionals from the Baltic Sea Region, as well as from Eastern and Central Europe.
Produced by Katja Uneborg for Stockholm-based firm Picky Pictures, Ship of Dreams is the only Nordic project taking part in the gathering.
Von Sydow’s latest endeavour draws on the events unfolding on a grey and overcast spring day in 1992, when the cruise ship ”Konstantin Simonov” set out from the port of Saint Petersburg. The ship hosted more than 300 happy writers from countries around the Baltic Sea - with dreams of a new world without walls and cold wars. Finnish journalist and writer Tom Paxal filmed their aspirations until he uncovered illegal activities on the lower deck. In 2020, he receives a parcel in the mail. “These are surely yours,” says an anonymous note. The parcel contains the films from the voyage. Now the memories are rekindled, and inspire the urge to find answers. The search takes us to Helsinki’s dark red-light district, where we meet exiled Russians from St. Petersburg, Florida, and some of the biggest Swedish writers on board. But when it is suddenly revealed that Vladimir Putin’s wife was one of the organisers, and that St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobtyak was the patron of the cruise, the warnings start appearing: "Don’t try to delve into this story and the events in the port of Saint Petersburg in the 1990s. It’s very dangerous.”
Paxal and von Sydow decide to finish the film project that the journalist had started in the 1990s. Together, they must seek answers to what really happened aboard the ”Ship of Dreams”, and find out if the dark forces have really won the battle, or if art and culture are ready for a final showdown.
The doc’s protagonists include the aforementioned Paxal and “a number of writers from around the Baltic Sea”. “And, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Putin also have important roles in the film,” von Sydow underscores. Jonatan Gammel is attached as the project’s DoP.
"The film’s primary release window is theatrical, but there’ll be room for TV and VOD as well. We’re in development, and we’ve started filming and investigating design, form and storytelling. This work will continue throughout 2024, and we will continue to immerse ourselves in the script and in the dramaturgy,” the director tells NFTFV.
“In parallel, we will keep on carrying out some research work. We believe that the film has international potential and could be structured as an international co-production with Finland and, possibly, other Baltic countries. And we’ve just started working on financing.”
Zooming in on the political context tackled by the film and how its initial concept has changed, he reveals: “Before Russia’s attack on Ukraine, I thought of this film as a fun, light-hearted story, with a dark undertone, but after 24 February 2022, it suddenly became a different one. World peace was at stake, and our writers’ dreams from the 1992 cruise - which, by the way, left Saint Petersburg exactly on 24 February - took on a completely different colour. Is the same man really behind both of these events, 30 years apart? Who really steers our ships?”
“I studied Russian in Moscow in the early 1990s. I was in the port of Leningrad right before its name change in 1991. I experienced the pressure of the harsh Soviet system, and the bubbling feeling that something was about to happen. For 30 years I’ve travelled regularly to Russia, always with the same “never again” feeling each time I left the country. I was a Moscow correspondent for a few weeks in the 1990s, and worked on a Trans-Siberian Express-focused show called Keyyo and Rheborg in Russia. But now I expect to never be able to go there again. In a way, I see this film as my legacy as a cultural journalist, as a connoisseur of Russia.”
Commenting on the project’s participation at Baltic Sea Docs, Uneborg chimes in: “Since the film is based on a literary cruise named “Baltic Waves”, and about the dream of transforming the Baltic Sea into “the Sea of Peace”, you couldn’t wish for a better venue than this festival. We’re looking forward to meeting up with other filmmakers, production companies and broadcasters in September.”
Ship of Dreams will be shot on locations in Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries. The project, budgeted at 4.7 million SEK, received early development funding from the Swedish Film Institute. To date, the pic is slated for a release in December 2025.