Aging is a subject nobody wants to think about. And it’s exactly the topic Swedish filmmakers, friends and TV hosts Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson set out to tackle with their feel-good documentary The Last Journey.
Starring Filip’s real-life father, 82-year-old Lars Hammar, the film follows Filip as he sets out to cheer up Lars by taking him on a road trip to France – the same one Lars took Filip on every summer in his youth.
“I’ve known Fil’s dad as long as I’ve known Fil, since the mid-90s,” Wikingsson tells Broadsheet. “And I’ve always loved how talkative and passionate he is. He’s a bit of a raconteur. And then I’ve seen the decline or whatever you want to call it, how he just sits at home. It’s heartbreaking. Filip called me and said, ‘I want to do something, maybe take him on a road trip like we did before’.”
Another factor that inspired the film was a series of lost tapes Filip found of his father. “When Filip showed me the old audio diaries that they kept in the 1980s, that’s when I felt, this is all so cinematic. This is amazing,” Wikingsson says.
Making the film led the duo to consider their own lives and imagine themselves in old age. Wikingsson, for example, reflected on the fact he lives in LA while his parents live in Sweden.
“[I] call [my] mum at the end of the day, and I’m about to pick up my kids, so I only have a few minutes,” he says. “And then she says, ‘Thank you so much for calling’, and you realise you should not thank me, and also, one day I’ll be that old person sitting and waiting for my kids’ phone calls.”
For Hammar, meanwhile, The Last Journey, unsurprisingly led to him reconsidering his relationship with his father.
“[Before the film], I was constantly telling him, ‘Cheer up, Dad. It’s all in your head’. That was the only thing we talked about,” he says. “Now it’s more like, ‘Okay, this is who he is. Let’s just not focus on his ailment, let’s not focus on his depression. Now we can just talk about soccer and other things he loves. And that’s much easier. I think that has really changed in my life.”
The Last Journey is now the highest-grossing documentary in Swedish history. Many viewers said it made them want to talk with their parents more often. “We get so many people DMing us like, ‘After I saw the film, I took my grandfather to Italy because he wanted to have one last beer and stuff, and here’s a picture of him. That’s incredible,” Wikingsson says.
Both hope The Last Journey will encourage a more open conversation about aging, and encourage viewers to think about their families and relationships. “It’s good to be reminded [that] there’s no safer, more bankable investment than spending time with people you love,” Hammar says.
The Last Journey is in cinemas now.
