Astrid Lindgren - Die Menschheit hat den Verstand verloren (2025)

In Stockholm, Sweden, on September 1, 1939, a 32-year-old unknown woman picks up a pen. That day, she begins keeping a diary. That day, World War II begins with Hitler’s army invading Poland. Picking up the pen becomes a life-changing inspiration for Astrid Lindgren. From that day until the end of December 1945, she writes a chronicle of the war and everyday life in neutral Sweden, with political insight. Over time, her diary increasingly becomes a passionate indictment of dictatorship and contempt for human life. She writes about her horror at the ignorance in her country, the brutal battles on the fronts, and the deportation of the Jews. She wishes someone would shoot Hitler, who, like all dictators, is a psychopath in her eyes. Since 1940, Astrid Lindgren has worked for the Swedish secret service, a job so secret that she can only allude to it in her diary. In the winter of 1941, her daughter Karin is ill for months. She makes her mother tell her new stories over and over about Pippi Longstocking, a character she has made up herself. The following year, Astrid Lindgren begins writing down the stories about the strong, red-haired girl, and on May 21, 1944, she gives them to her daughter Karin in a notebook for her tenth birthday. Shortly afterward, her husband, Sture Lindgren, admits that he has a lover and wants a divorce. While blood continues to be shed on the fronts across Europe and civilians suffer increasingly heavy bombing raids, her own world collapses. Astrid Lindgren increasingly discovers the healing power of writing for herself. Shortly before she closes the war diary with its final entry, dated December 31, 1945, the stories of Pippi Longstocking are published for the first time by the Stockholm publisher Raben & Sjögren. The documentary framing story shows her daughter Karin Nyman, granddaughter Annika Lindgren, and great-grandson Johan Palmberg in the present day, reading the diaries and visiting the original locations from the war years to re-examine for themselves Astrid Lindgren’s motivation for keeping a diary, her work for the secret service, her life crisis, and the beginnings of her literary output.