Fredrik Heinig, who shares the producer credit with Mattias Nohrborg, says the film's original idea came from director Kristian Petri and writer Henrik Berggren, author of the Olaf Palme biography Underbara dagar framför oss (A Wonderful Time Ahead) published in 2010.
Documentary specialists Maud Nycander and Kristina Lindström came on board very early on and Lindström convinced the former ABBA member and composer Benny Andersson to write the music. "Kristina had interviewed Benny for a Swedish newspaper and he had confessed at the time: "I have only been star-struck once: when I met Palme." So when we asked him to work on the film he immediately jumped on board, says Heinig.
"For a lot of Swedes - especially the younger generation, Palme is associated mostly with his assassination in 1986 and they actually know very little about him. Our intention from the outset was to focus on the man, his political career and his time," says Heinig.
Thanks to SVT archive material and other sources, including never seen before images from the Palme family's own super 8 films, the 105 minute film re-builds the personal journey of the legendary Swedish politician, from gifted upper-class boy to the Social Democrat leader who largely contributed to building the Swedish model as one of the world's most equal society. However as stressed by Heinig, the film is not an idealistic portrait of the man. It shows him in all his complexity and interviews with several personalities (from Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, former Swedish Prime Ministers Carl Bildt, Ingvar Carlsson, to filmmaker Roy Andersson) as well as Palme's own wife and sons contribute to building the fascinating Palme puzzle.
A television version consisting of 3x60' produced for SVT will give an even deeper and more detailed view of Palme's legacy and of Sweden of the mid-60s to the mid-80s. The TV series will also air on YLE in Finland and NRK in Norway. SVT Sales handles world distribution.