Scenes from sater

Believe us, these aren´t just any old scenes! The documentary we call DESPERADOS OF THE NORTH is a portrait of men condemned to confinement in Sweden´s psychiatric prisions for murder, rape and other crimes. For these men there was no way out of the ' permanent pavilion' , which has long been the home of Sweden´s most dangerous mental cases. They could not leave and never received visitors. A vacuum -tight world, legendary amongst both inmates and the general public. Today´s mental care has begun to open its door to the outside world, enabling SVT2 producers Noomi Liljefors and Dick Idestam Almquist to get inside and film this God-forsaken corner of the Swedish soul. To attract a wider audience and give viewers a better chance of understanding the inmates they met, the producers first released three short 'previws' based upon the lives of three persons who had spent their entire adult lives in Säter´s mental hospital. The previews were programmed to reach as broad an audience as possible ALICE AND HER DRESS was transmitted between periods of and international championship hockey game. PER-HJALMAR AND SCOPE PRISSIE followed a foreign documentary and HERMAN AND HIS WAR came after a cultural special. This strategy worked, since the 75 minute-long main feature programme was then seen by 1.400.000 viewers, an extremely high figure for a Swedish TV documentary.