Director Loran Batti’s documentary is a return to the place where he grew up, and an attempt to capture its people and problems.

Suburban Gottsunda is tormented by its gangs, a situation most Swedes are unfamiliar with, and Batti takes us close to a culture marked by its destructive macho attitudes, weapons and drugs. At the same time, people are trying to get on with their lives and it’s striking how hard it is for children growing up there to separate what should be unacceptable from what’s normal. Batti is caught in the middle, naively romanticizing his past without realizing how bad it’s gotten, a fact that friends of his who still live in Gottsunda make clear to him.

It’s a depressing but eye-opening report from a seemingly hopeless place.

2024-Sweden. 79 min. Color. Written, directed and photographed by Loran Batti. 

Trivia: Original title: G – 21 scener från Gottsunda. Co-produced by Göran Hugo Olsson.