During the overwhelming wave of fascism in Europe during WWII, one overlooked and overworked Swedish diplomat realizes he holds the power to help save thousands of Jewish lives. All it’s going to take is conquering a staggering mountain of paperwork, and then some. Based on a little-known true story about bureaucratic heroism in the face of Nazi terror, The Swedish Connection stars Henrik Dorsin as real-life Swede Gösta Engzell alongside Sissela Benn and Jonas Karlsson. The period film is written and directed by Thérèse Ahlbeck and Marcus Olsson (Happy Street).
Gösta Engzell (Dorsin) is an average diplomat, unseen and unsung. Obsessed with rules and regulations, Gösta follows his government’s directives to the letter as the head of the legal department at Sweden’s Foreign Ministry. His department normally reviews all types of visa applications, but since Hitler rose to power, they’ve been completely inundated with asylum cases. Jews from all over Europe — especially those in Germany — are desperately seeking escape as news of the Holocaust spreads like wildfire. At first, Gösta toes the line of neutrality adopted by Sweden by rejecting every visa application from someone of Jewish descent, even if they have Swedish heritage. The last thing Gösta’s bosses want is for Hitler, whose troops are currently ravaging European nations, to turn his attention to Sweden.
But when a new assistant, Rut Vogel (Benn), starts working for Gösta, his opinion on the refugee crisis slowly starts to shift. Rut starts questioning not only Gösta’s choices, but the government’s. She insists that real people in real danger are behind these pieces of paper, and Gösta is forced to consider the moral stakes at play. When rumors of Hitler’s “final solution” spread, alongside reports of Nazi raids on Jewish homes in Oslo, Gösta can no longer stand by and rubber-stamp his government’s actions. He gives his team a new mission: Save even one Jewish person of Swedish descent through loopholes, paperwork, and bureaucratic savviness. How many people can this pencil pusher save before Hitler’s regime starts to notice?
Yes. Gösta Engzell, born in 1897, was the head of the legal division of the Swedish Foreign Ministry in the late 1930s and 1940s. During the war, his actions and activism contributed to the rescue and relief of what is estimated to be tens of thousands of Jews. Engzell went on to become the Swedish ambassador to Poland, and then subsequently Finland. He died in 1997.
