Mikala Krogh on the true crime series Scandinavian Star

On the night of April 7 1990, 159 people died due to arson on the ferry Scandinavian Star, which sailed between Oslo and the Danish city of Frederikshavn.

To this day, the case is still unsolved - survivors and relatives are left without answers to the ‘whodunnit’.  

In the six-part series Scandinavian Star, top Danish documentary filmmaker Mikala Krogh (A Normal Life, A Year of Hope) has teamed up with journalist Lars Halskov, screenwriter Nikolaj Scherfig (The Bridge) and an impressive team of researchers, editors, animators, graphic designers to tell the whole story of this shared Scandinavian event of recent history.

To create a true crime Scandinavian drama series ,able to rival the likes of Netflix’ Making a Murderer or HBO’s The Jinx, Danish Documentary’s producer Sigrid Dyekjær (The Cave) and Nordisk Film Production’s Thomas Heinesen (A Fortunate Man) have raised €4m thanks to a round of Nordic co-financiers including Nordisk Film & TV Fond which invested a record NOK 2 million (around €191,000) for a documentary project. 

The series co-produced by Nordisk Film Norway was produced in collaboration with broadcasters DR, NRK, TV4 Sweden, with support from the Danish Film Institute, the Norwegian Film Institute, the Copenhagen Film Fund, Politiken’s journalistic Fund, Jyllands-Posten’s Journalistic Fund and the West Danish Film Fund.

Watch the trailer Scandinavian Star: CLICK HERE

Scandinavian Star had a preview screening of its two first episodes on Friday at the launch of CPH:DOX Festival in Copenhagen. LevelK handles world sales.

We spoke to director Mikala Krogh.

How and why did you decide to open that dramatic page of recent history?
Mikala Krogh: It is the biggest unsolved murder case in Scandinavia since WW2 as 159 persons died. It’s really a story about how the global reality hit a totally unprepared Scandinavia back in 1990. It was the first time there was a passenger ferry navigating from Oslo to Frederikshavn under the Bahamas flag; Scandinavian authorities didn’t know how to handle it and the usual safety controls fell between the cracks. Then Scandinavians didn’t know how to work together on the case. The series tries to tell the whole story, the tragedy, the failed investigation, as well as the destinies of survivors and family members who haven’t had answers in 30 years.

It’s hard to believe that Scandinavia sits on an unsolved case of that magnitude, linked to a large-scale corruption scandal. You would expect something like that to happen in countries under authoritarian regimes…
MK: Exactly. It is unbelievable. The combination of the bigger perspective with the ability to tell closer human stories, was what attracted us to the project. Also, we felt it was about time for Scandinavia to have its own True Crime series, along the lines of Making a Murderer, The Jinx etc.

The series is truly ambitious in content and style as you combine a very complex journalistic investigation with a dramaturgy and visually thrilling filmmaking, borrowed from the fiction universe. Could you tell us about this aspect?
MK: I’m a filmmaker, I studied at the film school in Denmark. Then I teamed up with Lars Halskov, a journalist from Politiken, who has been working on this case for a decade and who wrote the book ‘Fire: The Scandinavian Star Mystery’, alongside numerous articles on the case. He had never done television, so we complemented each other. We also had a fantastic screenwriter, Nikolaj Scherfig, usually attached to fiction works, who actually came up with the idea and put together the team.

It is so important for people to know that it’s a non-fiction series. We have used a fiction approach, dramaturgical tools for the narrative with the 6 episode-structure, cliff-hangers, etc but everything in the story is 100% true.

How long have you worked on the series and what manpower was involved?
MK: Almost four years. We spent the first two years in development to figure out the script, how to tell the story and structure it. The filming itself was fast. We had a wonderful editor in Kasper Leick who supervised a team of four editors and a huge team of researchers in the US, Canada, The Philippines, Norway, Denmark, Sweden. We conducted over 120 interviews and had 20 terabytes worth of footage! It’s definitely one of the biggest projects ever made in Denmark. Thanks to Danish Documentary’s collaboration with Nordisk Film, support from Danish, Norwegian, Swedish public broadcasters and funding bodies, we were able to put together this true Scandinavian production with very high production value.

You also had the multi-awarded Manuel Alberto Claro as DoP…
MK: We went to film school together and did our thesis together. He did the first interviews and concept for the remaining interviews. Other cinematographers took over after, but he was essential to create the look and grading.

Could you detail your use of computer graphics and 3D animation?
MK: For people to understand the geography of the ship and how the events unfolded, we felt we needed extra visual effects to make it engaging for the audience, as we didn’t want to do reconstructions. We hired graphic designer Torsten Høgh Rasmussen with whom I had worked on several films before. He’s done a beautiful job that gives a true cinematic approach. Then we had a team of animators to recreate the fire, people trying to escape etc.

What is the situation with the case? Will it reopen because of the new evidence that you’ve uncovered?
MK: After the fire there was a Norwegian investigation. After one year they said: "we believe we have the person who did it." A former arsonist with a bad track record was on the ship and died in the fire. The case was closed after they found him. But survivors did private investigations and linked the fire to a sabotage and an insurance fraud. The case was reopened in 2014 by the Norwegian police for two years, but again they found no evidence of sabotage or financially motivated arson. In our film, we try to establish why the governments never pushed to get an answer.

Because of our new evidence, if the case is to reopen, this time it should be in the hands of the Danish police as the Danish government said ‘if there is new information, we will reopen the case’. It would be nice for people to finally say ‘we are sorry-we did not do our jobs. We did a lot of mistakes!”

Ultimately for us it was more important to tell the entire story and give people an idea of the number of mistakes that were made. But it’s also a story of how to survive after such a traumatic event.

What would you say were the biggest challenges?
MK: One of the first challenges was to find the way to tell the story to make it understandable, not only for those who remembered the disaster but also for the younger generation and other people who know nothing about it. Then making the story visually interesting was another challenge, as we had a lot of evidence on paper. Also, I didn’t want to have a voiceover with one person telling the story. For me, the main character is the ship. I had to convince everyone that I could create a mosaic that would paint the bigger picture.

How difficult was it to convince survivors and families to share their traumatic experience?
MK: It took us more than a year to approach some people and we were lucky to have time for this crucial part. We wanted to spend time with our interviewees. Some people ultimately decided not to take part. In the last episode we have a good surprise. It took us a year to convince this person to be part of the story.

What’s next for you? Are you tempted by directing other documentary series?
MK: I feel I’ve made six films at the same time with this mega-project. At one point I was doing post on episodes 1-2, editing 3-4 and still shooting 5-6. It was challenging but so exciting. I enjoyed this new way of team working and storytelling. It offers so many new possibilities. Ultimately it goes down to having a really great story to tell.