09/09/2013 - Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård to executively produce his producer-writer wife Megan Everett-Skarsgård’s English-language film based on late Swedish author’s articles on post-war Germany

Swedish production outfit Viken Productions and writer-producer Megan Everett-Skarsgård have acquired film rights for the late Swedish author Stig Dagerman’s (photo) German Autumn, a series of articles he wrote from post World War II Germany, at the age of 24.

Next year will mark the 60^th anniversary of Dagerman’s suicide – he was then 31, a Swedish wunderkind with an international following. "Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion,” said UK author Graham Greene.

Executively produced by Everett-Skarsgård’s actor husband, Stellan Skarsgård, German Autumn – which, for her, “opened a dialogue on the suffering that war brought upon the civilian population, regardless of its politics” – will be shot with an English-language dialogue for international release.

“We are extremely proud to work with such an important collection of war journalism, and to take on the daunting task of bringing the ideas of such a treasured Swedish writer to a larger international audience,” said Everett-Skarsgård, who acquired the rights from the Dagerman estate and his daughter Lo Dagerman.

German Autumn has previously been adapted for the screen by German director Michael Gaumnitz (2009); a total of 14 of his works were filmed, including his short story To Kill a Child, first by Danish director Esben Høilund-Carlsen (1966), then by Swedish directors Björne Larson and Alexander Skarsgård (2003), narrated by Stellan Skarsgård.