Film-maker Erik Gandini’s (Gitmo, Videocracy) latest docu-essay looks at Swedes’ obsession with independence and self-sufficiency and how this ideal, coupled with a welfare state that provides for every physical need, produces loneliness and alienation. Using an infographic plotted by social historian Lars Trägårdh that posits Sweden as the most secular and individualistic of societies, Gandini segues from theory to practice with a disjointed series of anecdotes. We meet sperm-bank donors and clients, state investigators trying to find the next of kin of old people who died alone and a suicide who wasn’t found for years because all his standing orders were paid automatically. By way of contrast, here are some nice Syrian refugees learning that, to make friends with Swedes, they must be on time, and there are some hippies in the woods stroking each other. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, a Swedish doctor has turned his back on hi-tech medical equipment and anomie to fix broken bones with bicycle spokes and plumber’s clips, because that’s all his hospital can afford. It doesn’t really add up to much of an argument, jollied along as it is by stylised editing and jaunty ironic music.
