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Crime drama based on real-life events rarely delves into what happens after the case in question, but that is what the team behind buzzy Swedish series The Congregation: The Bride of Christ have done. The second season of the B-Reel Films-produced drama premieres at the ongoing Göteborg Film Festival where the crowd will see two instalments.
The first season bowed on Swedish broadcaster TV4 in 2021. It dramatized a twisted murder mystery in the rural Swedish village of Knutby that involved a cult-like church congregation. The six-episode sophomore season drops on TV4 Play next month. It covers a part of the story about this congregation that isn’t as well known, even in Sweden, explains Johannes Åhlund, a Managing Partner at B-Reel and producer on both series of The Congregation.
“Most of the documentaries and articles on Knutby have covered up until the murder that ended Season 1 of [The Congregation], but we’re coming back to the congregation after the fact. The people concerned are in the news and headlines and we’re seeing how they deal with that pressure. Stuff gets even darker,” he says.
Directors Goran Kapetanovic and Patrik Gyllström will be at the premiere alongside cast including Aliette Opheim, who won a Kristallen Award for Best Actress for her Season 1 performance, one of four that the series scooped. Season 2 also introduces Alexander Jubell as the congregation’s new pastor, and he’ll be at the Göteborg launch.
“We realized that we had to have a Season 2 to get the full story,” adds Ulf Synnerholm, also a Managing Partner and EP at B-Reel. “It is about the characters and the lengths people go to just to be part of something. The psychology of a cult or a very strong congregation is fascinating. It wasn’t finished with that criminal case that ended Season 1.”
Keeping it Reel
Synnerholm and Åhlund run B-Reel alongside Fredrik Heinig and Pelle Nilsson, the latter also oversees its LA office. Originally a sister company to B-Reel, a digital prodco that focused on commercials, the Swedish indie has carved out a standalone reputation for drama, film, and docs that tell Scandi stories with a global appeal.
The Congregation: The Bride of Christ follows The Helicopter Heist for Netflix, and The Pirate Bay for pubcaster SVT as B-Reel drama projects based on real events. The Swedish indie has also made movies including Ari Aster’s folk horror Midsommar with A24 and Square Peg.
For Åhlund, the through-line for B-Reel’s output is a lack of cynicism. “We don’t approach projects thinking ‘we could sell this,’ or ‘this is what people are asking for.’ That might come later on in the process, of course, because we’re in a business, but when we approach a project, it’s really about filtering out the cynicism. It’s about going for the stories and the creatives that we feel passionately about.”
The Helicopter Heist, based on Jonas Bonnier’s novel and about a daring robbery in Stockholm, is a good example. The book had been optioned and a U.S.-produced movie was being lined up starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
“When it didn’t happen in Hollywood, we had a chance to pitch for it coming back to Sweden and saw a chance to do something beyond just the heist and daring helicopter stuff,” Åhlund says. “We wanted to do a series about people and the choices that they had to make. We were quite insistent on doing a longer format drama series so we could really make it a character-driven drama with heist elements.”
The series duly debuted at the Stockholm Film Festival last November. The team are regulars on the festival circuit. Another premiere for a B-Reel drama came last October at the Geneva International Film Festival when The Pirate Bay, about the eponymous BitTorrent site and its founders, bowed.
Bloody Men Movie
Two alums from The Pirate Bay team are now working on a new B-Reel project. Jens Sjogren will direct Jävla Karlar (Bloody Men in English) from Jakob Beckham’s script.
The movie adaptation of the award-winning novel from Andrev Walden is slated to enter production this year. The book took Sweden by storm when it was released in 2023, becoming the country’s bestselling title of the year and landing the Sweden’s top literary honor, the coveted August Prize.
The story starts in the early 1980s and follows a young boy who has a series of father figures coming and going in his life. His mother relays a fantastical story about his real father, a mysterious, long-haired figure living far away, which sparks the boy’s imagination to believe his father is the king of a magical land.
Synnerholm, who joined B-Reel Films in 2020, having been Head of Production and acting Head of Drama at TV4/CMore, says there’s some way to go to complete the financing, but it’s coming together. “We’re actually in a fortunate position and there are a lot of financiers that are interested in participating, so it’s more about selecting the right [partners] when it comes to distribution and the broadcaster.”
English-language with a Scandi twist
Looking ahead, B-Reel wants to further complement its homegrown output with English-language fare – although with a Swedish twist.
The company is working up some as-yet-unidentified UK-originated IP. There is also co-development deal with Black Bear in the U.S. to run the rule over projects that will work Stateside.
Synnerholm says that the people who want to work with B-Reel on English-language actively want them to retain their Scandi mindset. “They wouldn’t want us to adopt an English way of developing things, what they’re looking for is that that outside voice. That’s somehow what we bring to the table. People are curious to see how that could have a positive and a different effect on something, how it could have added value.”
Congregating at Göteborg
Ahead of the premiere at Göteborg, Åhlund teases the new series of The Congregation and says: “I would even argue that it’s a stronger season than Season 1. People that have seen it are taken aback by the stuff that they didn’t know.”
Is Season 2 the end of The Congregation story? “I’m not giving a definite answer, because I don’t think that the story is necessarily entirely finished,” Åhlund says. “There is still stuff coming out about the aftermath that we might have to revisit.”
