Babes and booze - Swedish Film Institute

42
aFteR eiGht
(WORKING TITLE)
tRaCKs oF MY
teaRs 2
aXel PeteRsén
DIRECTOR
PRODUCTION INFO P. 53
myth vs. truth
The story of Saddam Hussein’s lost Ferrari Testarossa is the subject
of director/artist Axel Petersén’s latest short film Tracks of my
Tears 2, while his upcoming first feature After Eight (working title) is
a psychological thriller set in Swedish party town Båstad.
What unites the two? Petersén’s strong will not to be obvious.
It all began on a bus between Lebanon and
Syria. The year was 2004 and Axel Petersén
found himself next to a Swedish-Iraqi
man with an unusual story to tell.
“The man had been asked by one of his
cousins to drive a sports car from Saddam
Hussein’s former garage to Romania via
Turkey,” explains Petersén from a sofa in his
apartment in central Stockholm. “His Swedish
passport meant that he was free to drive
it out of the country. He had said no to the offer,
but I gathered from what he said that
he’d given it some serious thought. Not that
he would have earned much money from
the arrangement, but just for the thing itself,
to drive that particular car through the
desert.”
Petersén was fascinated by the story of
the dead dictator’s sports car. As a director
he really wanted to make something of it,
but it was to take some time before it came
to fruition.
“I made lots of other films, but it was hard
TExT MATTIAS DAHLSTRÖM PHOTO SANDRA qVIST
to forget Saddam’s car. I was in Egypt and
Palestine filming other things, but had that
story running though my mind all the while.
I wasn’t sure whether it was true or not, but
it fascinated me, as if I’d been told a modern
myth. I’d never heard about it either before
or since. But it seemed logical – Saddam
must have had any number of luxury cars
which had to end up somewhere.”
What finally emerged was an installation
that did the rounds in various art galleries
Tracks of my Tears 2.
AxEL PETERSéN