Hemligheten

During a warm evening in August 1970, actor Carl-Ivar Nilsson accidentally hit himself in the knee with an axe. He was on stage at the time, acting in a play by Brecht. At first the audience thought it was a part of the drama, but soon understood the severity of the situation when they horrified looked on as the bleeding actor was brought out to a waiting ambulance. On the same night, in the same hospital, Carl-Ivar's son was born.

Hemligheten (The Secret) is an intimate and self-reflecting collage of images, moving between dream and reality. It's about a son with a complicated relationship to his father, about an actor with a complicated relationship to himself, about a family that is falling apart. The journey takes its beginning in the Sweden of the 1950s, whirls us through Swedish theater and TV history, and ends with reconciliation in our grim modern times.

Throughout the film, old clips from films and dramas are taken out of their original contexts to tell a brand new story. The actors step in and out of their roles, we see them age and get to follow the events "behind the scenes", behind the curtains and the lines.

Featuring Lars Green, Lis Nilheim, Magnus “Mankan” Nilsson, Ingvar Hirdwall, Roland Jansson, Rickard Wolff, Thomas Pontén, Tomas von Brömssen, Christina Stenius, Lennart Hjulström and Bengt Bratt.