In between English language films, including a Working Title project, Swedish director Daniel Espinosa (pictured) will come back home to film a new version of Vilhelm Moberg’s novel The Emigrants, memorably brought to the screens in 1971 by Jan Troell.

The news was announced during the traditional press conference in Cannes of regional film fund Film Väst (new name), co-producer of the film. The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) will be produced by Svensk Filmindustri’s Head of Film Fredrik Wikström Nicastro who previously worked with Espinosa on Easy Money. Kon-Tiki scriptwriter Petter Skavlan will bring the acclaimed novel to the silver screen and shooting is set to start in 2017.

The Emigrants was among the biggest projects announced at Film Väst’s press conference with Per Fly’s The Killing of Hammarskjöld (see other story).  Other titles presented by their respective producers include French chiller Dans la forêt (In the Forest) by Gilles Marchand co-produced by Götafilm, the Zentropa productions You Disappear by Nordic Council Film Prize winner Peter Schønau Fog starring Trine Dyrholm and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, as well as Second Act by Birgitte Stærmose based on a script by Kim Fupz Aakeson. Swedish producer Linda Hambäck introduced the animated project The World of Dolores & Gunellen based on Pernilla Stalfelt’s children’s books.

Tomas Eskilsson, Film Väst CEO rounded off the conference by mentioning Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune that just wraps its shoot in Trollhättan, Pernilla August’s The Serious Game currently filming, and two other Swedish films scheduled for this summer at Film Väst’s facilities: Petter Lennstrand’s Up in the Blue and Fanni Metelius’ I Don’t Want to Get Old Now

Sweden’s largest regional film fund which invests SEK90 million in films each year (of which SEK 20 million in TV dramas) had four films selected in Cannes: The Here After screening at the Directors’ Fortnight, the Romanian film One Floor Below, coproduced by Anna Croneman, My Skinny Sister screening at Cannes Junior, and Swedish film The Boys shown at the Critics Week.

Two questions to Daniel Espinosa

You haven’t made a film in Sweden since Easy Money in 2010. Coming back home to create a modern version of Jan Troell’s Oscar nominated The Emigrants must be a dream project for you…
Daniel Esponisa
: Fredrik [Wikström Nicastro] and I are old friends. We speak all the time, and try to find projects to do together. Then I read Vilhelm Moberg’s book and it happened to be Fredrik’s dream to turn it into a film. Today’s political situation and human tragedies of people filling the Mediterranean sea reminds me of the human tragedies that were filling the seas in the 1850s. It’s a very important film to make right now, to make us Europeans remember that our forefathers did the same journey and that we should help those refugees.

What are you working on right now and are you looking forward to coming back to smaller and perhaps more personal filmmaking in Sweden?
DE: I’m now working on a Working title movie set in the 1970s, but filming in the English language gives me the same freedom that you would have in Sweden.

I look at what my fellow colleagues Baltasar Kormákur, Alejandro Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón; they all go back home to make a film, to re-boost their creative energy. It’s important as a director to maintain your connection with your roots, otherwise you get lost in a no man’s land.“