{"id":147714,"date":"2025-08-15T11:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T11:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/147714\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T11:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T11:45:12","slug":"town-in-sweden-doc-once-you-shall-be-one-of-those-who-lived-long-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/147714\/","title":{"rendered":"Town in Sweden Doc ‘Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe themes of loss, change, home and the transient nature of life at a time when \u201ccommunities across the world are being erased by industry, climate change, and political decisions\u201d are explored in kaleidoscopic form in Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago, the new documentary from Swedish filmmakers Alexander Ryn\u00e9us and Per Bifrost that is world premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is the only documentary in the competition lineup of the 78th edition of the Scottish festival. The documentary may focus on Malmberget in northern Sweden to explore what remains when a place vanishes \u2014 not only physically, but also emotionally and culturally \u2014 but the film\u2019s themes are universal.<\/p>\n

\n\tMalmberget is one of the world\u2019s largest underground iron ore mines. The town is being dismantled piece by piece, leaving behind boarded windows, demolished homes\u00a0and\u00a0empty streets. Yet amid the ruins, life continues \u2014 quietly reshaping itself as nature begins to reclaim the land.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn a small mining town in the north of Sweden, we witness a melancholic, humorous,\u00a0and\u00a0sometimes absurd last epoch of a place,\u201d reads a synopsis. \u201cBeneath the town\u2019s fading streets lies one of the world\u2019s largest underground iron ore mines \u2014 an engine of both prosperity\u00a0and\u00a0disappearance.\u201d The film is told through the episodic experiences of some of the town\u2019s last residents, \u201cholding on to a sense of home even as the ground beneath them collapses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmakers began their artistic relationship with Malmberget in 2013 with the hourlong TV film Malmberget \u2013 The Home\u00a0and\u00a0the Cavity and returned to document the town\u2019s dissolution for installation works before their new film, which is their second feature and their first feature about Malmberget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of its world premiere, THR talked to Bifrost and Ryn\u00e9us about Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago, why they keep returning to Malmberget, how the fear of death plays into the film, and what\u2019s next for them.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe grew up together in a place that had many mines that are now closed,\u201d Bifrost tells THR. \u201cMalmberget is like 1,000 kilometers from where we live, but it is the sort of place that we felt could be like home, but was on the brink of vanishing. So there was a connection that we felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRyn\u00e9us recalls reading, when the duo first researched the town, how a researcher noted that people\u2019s sleep gets affected by mining. \u201cThere was this very human feeling of living above one of the world\u2019s biggest underground iron ore mines,\u201d he tells THR. \u201cIt was this mood of this place that we started to just film, and now it\u2019s been quite some time that we have been filming there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago shows\u00a0locals in various situations cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9-style. \u201cIn a way, it\u2019s a collaboration between the people we film,\u201d explains Bifrost. \u201cOver the years, I think, we both started feeling that we know more people in Malmberget than we know in the village that we grew up in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRyn\u00e9us laughs and agrees. \u201cWe have spent so much time there, also while not filming, but just meeting people and getting to know each other during these special circumstances of everything disappearing,\u201d he shares. \u201cThe filming became something we also did together with these people. So it felt very natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor previous films, \u201cwe film more obvious things, such as conflict-oriented stuff,\u201d he adds. \u201cOver the course of time, these kinds of elements started disappearing, because we got closer to the people. And we started to notice underneath all this vanishing, a kind of resistance and resilience, making things like everyday life work, even though everything is falling apart around you. So, the film needed to suit that mood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaking duo says they like taking their time while working on documentaries, and time is a key element that the movie explores and helps with its focus on mood. \u201cThe element of time is very much how we approach it to get very close to the people and get personal snippets from different angles of this situation,\u201d says Bifrost. \u201cIn a way, it all boils down to the themes of loss and how you cope with loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDescribing the current state of Malmberget, Bifrost says: \u201cThe town is totally vanished, but there\u2019s still a conflict about the church. And then you have these towns and areas around the town. Our first film was very much about how to solve the situation, with everyone in the end getting grouped into different groups set to move at different stages. Now, in this film, we try to understand what happens when all those stages are gone. It was very much about capturing the last epoch when the main town is being demolished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCould the doc duo return to capture a future Malmberget after two past feature docs, the new one and two exhibition films about it? \u201cWe\u2019ve been doing this for 15 years in this place. The town is disappearing, so we thought this film is finished, so now this is the end for this,\u201d Ryn\u00e9us tells THR. \u201cBut since we like long-time scales, we\u2019re already thinking about whether it is possible to make a film with just nature and animals in the future. We\u2019ve been talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago is also an illustration of how in life, things can often have benefits and risks or downsides at the same time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople have very strong feelings against the mining company, but they also understand that the town was built because of the mine, so there is this very complex feeling,\u201d Ryn\u00e9us highlights. \u201cSo, it\u2019s not either-or.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAdds Bifrost: \u201cThis is why it\u2019s also a film about acceptance, in a way. In the end, you have to accept the situation. It\u2019s the same thing with life and death. I mean, you have to accept that we have our time here on Earth, and then we\u2019re not here [anymore].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat are Bifrost and Ryn\u00e9us working on next? \u201cThe next feature documentary we are working on together is about faith in Sweden,\u201d says Ryn\u00e9us. \u201cIt\u2019s often described as one of the world\u2019s most secular countries. The topic is to see if this statement is true. So we are in Sweden, filming churches, which are often quite empty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven that the two come from the countryside, \u201cwe want to have this angle of visiting churches and communities in the countryside,\u201d Bifrost tells THR. \u201cIn some churches, for Sunday Mass, there are only three people attending. But then, when something happens in a small community, you can have the whole church filled.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago is a long title, but it also stands out. Where did it come from? It\u2019s a sentence from a poem by a Swedish poet, P\u00e4r Lagerkvist, that the filmmaking duo likes. \u201cWe both liked that book very much, but when we found that sentence, we just felt it was what the film was about,\u201d recalls Ryn\u00e9us. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe poem itself has very much to do with nature and how everything goes back to its original state,\u201d concludes Bifrost. \u201cIn a way, Malmberget is like every place that is disappearing. So the story is universal. That\u2019s something that we really want to emphasize with this film.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The themes of loss, change, home and the transient nature of life at a time when \u201ccommunities across…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":147715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[28236,171,1801,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-147714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-edinburgh-international-film-festival","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}