Love and murder - Swedish Film Institute

36
HarBour oF Hope
maGnus Gertten
direcTor
producTion info p. 43
In the new country
in the spring of 1945 a boat full of refugees landed in the harbour of malmö in southern sweden.
more than 60 years later magnus Gertten set out to find some of the passengers, now spread
around the world, for his documentary Harbour of Hope. TexT anders dahlbom
It all started off as a bet. Magnus Gertten’s
father wanted his son’s next documentary
to be about the war refugees who arrived
by boat to Malmö in the spring of 1945. A contemporary
newsreel shows the event and
some of the refugees themselves. Thinking
that the Second World War had been done to
death as a subject, his son held out against
the idea. But finally he remarked, mostly as a
joke: “OK, we’ll make the film if we can identify
any of the people in the film.”
Several years later, Harbour of Hope (Hoppets
hamn, 2011) is a reality. The documentary
paints an untypical portrait of the victims
of the war. Gertten managed not only to identify
some of the haggard faces that flicker
past on the black and white archive footage,
but also to track them down and let them
speak of their memories of arriving in Sweden,
the free country where their lives took a
new and brighter turn.
Teenager Joe had lost all his family in the
war, but quickly found a friend in Stieg, a
young boy from Malmö. Baby Ewa is carried
ashore from the boat to spend her life wondering
who her father was. And in South Africa
Irene recalls how some 60 years previously
her mother covered her eyes to protect
her daughter from the horrors of the concentration
camp. It’s a story full of fascinating
life stories, tinged both with joy and sorrow.
“As a documentary filmmaker, it’s moments
like this that you live for, to get the