The Swedish Connection

**The Bureaucracy of Good

The banality of evil has been dissected on screen for decades, often rendered in the sharp, terrifying uniforms of the oppressor. But cinema rarely turns its lens with equal rigor toward the banality of good—the idea that heroism can look less like a battlefield charge and more like a stamp on a visa application. In *The Swedish Connection* (*Den svenska länken*), directors Marcus A. Olsson and Thérèse Ahlbeck offer a quiet yet devastating rebuttal to the cinematic tradition of the war hero. Here, the weapon of choice is not a gun, but a loophole.



Set within the gray, suffocating corridors of the Swedish Foreign Ministry in 1942, the film introduces us to Gösta Engzell (played with masterful, understated anxiety by Henrik Dorsin). Engzell is not Schindler; he is a man of files, regulations, and "neutrality"—that distinctly Swedish armor worn to deflect the horrors occurring just across the water. Olsson and Ahlbeck frame the ministry not as a bastion of diplomacy, but as a pressure cooker of silence. The cinematography is claustrophobic, dominated by dim basement lighting and the endless, towering stacks of paper that seem to physically weigh down the characters. The sound design underscores this bureaucratic purgatory: the clanking of sewage pipes overhead serves as a constant, rhythmic reminder of the messiness of the world trying to invade their sanitized sanctuary.

The narrative pivots on the arrival of Rut Vogl (Sissela Benn), whose quiet insistence pierces Engzell’s administrative shield. The film’s central conflict is internal; it fights the national instinct of self-preservation. Jonas Karlsson, playing the pragmatic Staffan Söderström, embodies the terrifying logic of neutrality, advising Engzell to "neutralize" applicants with impossible paperwork rather than outright rejection. It is a chilling depiction of how institutions can commit violence through inaction.



Yet, the film’s brilliance lies in its subversion of the "great man" trope. Engzell does not undergo a sudden, thunderous transformation. There are no swelling speeches. Instead, we watch a man realize that the very tools of his oppression—red tape, protocols, the "Swedish connection" requirement—can be weaponized for mercy. The "action" sequences are scenes of furious stamping and hushed conversations in bathrooms. In one particularly poignant moment, the realization of the Holocaust is not shown through graphic flashbacks, but reflected in Dorsin’s crumbling composure as he reads a report he can no longer dismiss as "rumor." It is a performance of profound vulnerability, stripping away the safety of the bureaucrat to reveal the terrified human beneath.



*The Swedish Connection* is a film that demands we look at the paper pushers of history with new eyes. It suggests that while evil may thrive when good men do nothing, salvation can sometimes arrive when a few ordinary men decide to do their jobs just a little bit differently. It is a tense, claustrophobic, and ultimately deeply human drama that reminds us that moral courage often wears a cardigan, not a cape.