Terrorister – en film om dom dömda / Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced

When the anti-globalisation protests at the 2001 European Union summit in Gothenburg turned violent, the Swedish government took swift and decisive action. Some 460 protesters were arrested and 14 of them received long prison sentences. The government deemed the rioters “terrorists”. One of those detained was Stefan Jarl’s son. In their film, Jarl and Lukas Moodysson paint a different picture of the conflict. In moving interviews, young activists talk about their motivation for participating in the protests, voice their criticism of an inequitable economic order, and relate their traumatic experiences facing state forces. “With this raw, often polemic, but always honest film, Stefan Jarl and Lukas Moodysson take a decisive stance on the arrest of demonstrators at the 2001 EU summit in Gothenburg and the alarming criminalisation of protest movements.” (Arsenal, Berlin 2009).