Film i Väst Co-Producing Three New Documentary Features

2026-07-01

Highly personal stories with an international perspective, innovative storytelling techniques and distinctive artistic voices. These are the qualities that unite the three new documentary projects that Film i Väst is joining as co-producer: "Our Eternal Life" by Erik Gandini, "Letter to Alvin" by Göran Hugo Olsson and Hilton Als, and "The Days I Will Forget" by Morgane Dziurla-Petit.

We want to support filmmakers with a clear artistic vision and stories that can engage audiences far beyond Sweden. These projects are all personal and exploratory in a creative way, demonstrating how you can illuminate major social issues while continuing to push documentary film forward as an art form,

Jenny Luukkonen, Head of Documentary and Talent at Film i Väst.

Letter to Alvin by Göran Hugo Olsson and Hilton Als. Photo: Alvin Baltrop

Letter to Alvin

"Letter to Alvin" explores the life and long-overlooked artistic legacy of queer Black photographer Alvin Baltrop. Through a newly discovered archive and a poetic dialogue between Baltrop’s photographs and the writings of Hilton Als, the film brings New York’s Lower West Side of the 1970s and 1980s vividly to life – a time marked by freedom and passion, but also by danger and loss. Built around unprecedented access to Baltrop’s recently rediscovered archive, the film highlights an artist whose work speaks as powerfully today as it did during his lifetime.

“Alvin Baltrop’s photographs portray themes that are just as relevant today as they were during his lifetime – vulnerability and discrimination, but also love, freedom and community. We hope this film will give him the place in history he deserves,” says Hilton Als.

The film is co-directed by Göran Hugo Olsson and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and cultural critic Hilton Als. Olsson is internationally acclaimed for documentaries including "The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975", "Concerning Violence", "That Summer" and "Israel Palestine on Swedish Television 1958–1989". Als, a staff writer at The New Yorker, brings a deeply personal and literary perspective to Baltrop’s images and life story. Letter to Alvin is produced by Melissa Lindgren and Tobias Janson at Story AB.

Our Eternal Life by Erik Gandini. Photo: Fredrik Wenzel

Our Eternal Life

Can a documentary capture something that has not yet happened? In "Our Eternal Life", Erik Gandini explores a future that is already beginning to take shape. Through people living at the heart of demographic change in different parts of the world, the film becomes a cinematic and musical essay on ageing, childlessness by choice, the passage of time and how reproduction has evolved from a private matter into a political battleground.

“For the first time in human history, we are moving towards a world where there will be more elderly people than young people. I want to explore that transformation before it has fully unfolded and examine what it tells us about ourselves and our future,” says Erik Gandini.

Erik Gandini is one of Sweden’s most internationally renowned documentary filmmakers. His award-winning films include "Videocracy", "The Swedish Theory of Love and After Work. With "Our Eternal Life", he reunites with cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel and editor and composer Johan Söderberg, two of his long-standing creative collaborators. The film is being developed as an international co-production by producer Antonio Russo Merenda at Ginestra Film and will be filmed in several locations around the world.

The Days I Will Forget by Morgane Dziurla-Petit

The Days I Will Forget

In "The Days I Will Forget", Morgane Dziurla-Petit explores the relationship between a daughter and her alcoholic father through an innovative documentary approach inspired by the concept of a time loop. As the father is given the opportunity to relive the same day over and over again, the film becomes an intimate story about addiction, reconciliation and the possibility of a second chance.

“This film is not only about alcoholism, but about the people who live with someone else’s addiction. I want to tell a story about the possibility of change, and about how difficult it is to break the patterns that shape a family,” says Morgane Dziurla-Petit.

Morgane Dziurla-Petit is a French-Swedish filmmaker whose work moves between documentary and fiction. She won a Guldbagge Award for the short film "Excess Will Save Us", whose feature-length version received the Special Jury Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. "The Days I Will Forget" won the Tempo Pitch Award 2024 and has been selected for Doc Forward at Nordisk Panorama. In this new project, she continues to challenge the language of documentary filmmaking in what is her most personal work to date.

"The Days I Will Forget" is produced by Paul Blomgren at GötaFilm.