Household names at home but working under the moniker of Filip och Fredrik, Swedish TV hosts and journalists Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson are now in the international spotlight with their documentary The Last Journey, Sweden’s Oscar entry.
The movie follows a road trip they organize for Hammar’s elderly father, retired French teacher Lars, taking him back to his favorite holiday destination in the South of France in a bid to reignite his spark for life.
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The work – touching on such universal themes as aging and the shifting relationships between parents and children over time – has drawn more than 400,000 spectators in Sweden, making it the highest-grossing documentary ever in the country.
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“It started out as a private project,” Hammar explained during Deadline’s Contenders International panel. “I’d been talking to my mom because she called me continuously and she’s like, ‘h’He’s so depressed, he’s just sitting in his recliner at home.’”
The documentary idea grew out of a conversation with Wikingsson and the realization that the trip would make a good premise for a film.
“We just wanted to make sure the whole filming thing didn’t get in the way of the experience for Filip’s dad,” said Wikingsson. “That was the main thing. It started out as life, not as a movie.”
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This aim did not stop the duo from occasionally playing with reality behind the scenes, to reconstruct aspects of France that Hammar’s father held dear. Wikingsson cited the films Goodbye, Lenin and Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing as sources of inspiration.
“We wanted him to have the best trip ever and let the audience in on whatever tweaks we had in the hat,” he said. “It was just a fun thing to add to this whole road trip that could have been a little predictable and maybe a little bland.”
Hammar said the film ended up being about his personal journey as much as that of his father.
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“When someone close to you gets older and he’s not the same person he used to be, it takes some time to accept that,” he said. “I think people can relate to that. I’ve come to realize that life consists of many, many different chapters. Some of them are very bright and happy and some of them are darker, but there’s a silver lining to every chapter.”
Check out the panel video above.