In partnership with researchers from Lund University, University of Gothenburg, and Södertörn University, Tottemo Production created the short film Who Stands Up for Alvar (2024), based on real-life case studies on moral stress in eldercare. The film has been screened in municipalities, universities and public forums across Sweden and Europe, initiating vital conversations between care workers, policy makers, and students. Click here to read the Artistic Research output – Final Thesis MA in Film at HDK-Valand Gothenburg University
Through the collaboration with me as director and screenwriter, the idea is that an interesting synergy of artistically reflecting on the research material will result in a new understanding of the situation for those working in the elderly care and the elderly in the field, through cinematic storytelling. The goal is to reach new target groups for elderly care through dramedy and to highlight the values that are the foundation of our society in a new way through dramatic storytelling. It is a collaboration between scientific research and artistic research – a synergy that can give a much deeper picture of the people in the field than the media coverage that is done and which often covers only a small part or only focuses on the problems or the poor conditions.
The film will create identification and insight into the complex network of moral decisions that must be made daily by staff in elderly care. With an increasing need for elderly care, there is also a greater perspective of our shared values in society where we take care of the people who built the welfare state. Both the elderly and staff in the field see their work and their existence as something valuable. Therefore, one can sometimes feel that the one-sided description of the scarce working conditions and the disparaging image we have of the elderly as a burden on society needs to be given a different angle – a new story. In memory of Carin Mannheimer as one of the artists who also worked with these subjects, this project floats in her spirit of the desire to depict the human noble values found in the field.
My topic is about elderly care. It’s not immediately a subject you think dramedy is suitable for, but that’s precisely why I’d like to work with it to see how this synergy can create a completely new engagement for a wider audience. In the same way that the crime genre has created a lift and interest in the police’s activities, I want to test whether this synergy can create a lift for elderly care.
Minna a single mother to a fifteen year old daughter, an artist who’s only possibility for an employment is within the social service as an assistant nurse, performs her duties with empathy and dedication for the ones she is helping but pressured by unit managers that needs to keep the budget and the more she tries to be helpful the more her benevolence is used until one day when she realises she’s had enough.
An assistant nurse at the home service is driven into an ever-increasing work spiral and is faced with the dilemma of also dealing with the terminally ill and lonely but grumpy neighbor who refuses all forms of municipal help even though he clearly cannot take care of himself.
About the social service and its elderly care in Sweden and its operators. What is the price of a human being. What is the price of dignity.
It is a story about a welfare Sweden which, with its increasing elderly population, faces the challenge of creating a dignified life even for people in their last years.
How can Minna sustain her empathic core for her fellow human being and care for the elderlies with compassion despite the infernal cut downs of budgets and can she stay present for her elite practicing ice skating daughter at the same time? She witnesses people perish from loneliness. Can she really stay passive to these human destinies.
Drama/Comedy
Read more about the film here:
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