The New Doktor Glas, A Century Later text Natalia Muntean Christian wears jacket Jeanerica t-shirt Oscar Jacobson trousers HOPE Isac wearsleather jacket HOPE trousers Tiger of Sweden knit underneath and boots Oscar Jacobson Thea wears hat Jeanerica top Malina trousers Lisa Yang earrings and bracelet Maria Nilsdotter heels ATP “I felt very comfortable failing,” says Christian Fandango about filming the new adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg’s Doktor Glas. Premiering in Swedish cinemas at the end of February, the film, reimagined by screenwriter and actor Isac Calmroth and directed by Erik Leijonborg, brings Söderberg’s 1905 novel into the present day. It reframes the classic moral dilemma: who has the right to judge, and who decides what is justified? The priest becomes a celebrated writer, private shame collides with public image, and Helga gains an agency largely denied to her in the original text. What remains unchanged are the questions at the story’s core: Who is guilty? Who controls the narrative? And how far can moral conviction go before it turns destructive? Natalia Muntean: Dr Glas has been interpreted for over a century. When you started working on this version, was there something you all agreed needed to be very different from earlier adaptations, and maybe from the book? Christian Fandango: We all agreed that we wanted it to be a modern take. Isac Calmroth: And you can’t really help it. Everything changes when it’s modern, because it’s 100 years later. Even if sometimes we wanted to go back to the book and tried to, it doesn’t really work. Erik Leijonborg: When Söderberg wrote it, it was very contemporary and really on the edge of moral questions, both for society and for the individual. Those questions are still exactly relevant today. If you want to take the temperature of Stockholm and the people living here, you can read that book at any time. For example, can I help a woman who has been raped? Can I take the life of the rapist? Is that morally correct? Is abortion morally right? In 1905, these boundaries were defined by strict, often oppressive laws. Today, we have the consent law. These questions will keep being asked as long as we’re human beings trying to figure out where the boundaries are. And then there’s the contemporary life we live – social media, being a public figure. These aspects felt very relevant to us. Thea wears hat Jeanerica brosch Ole Lynggaard, top Malina trousers Lisa Yang earrings Maria Nilsdotter Erik wearstotal look Oscar Jacobson NM: So you brought some of your own experience into the characters? Thea Sofie Loch Næss: Maybe. But I think one obvious thing when writing something in 2025, compared to the book, is Helga’s agency. I remember when I was reading the original, I was looking for Helga, thinking, “Where is she?” She’s only viewed through the men’s eyes. She doesn’t really have agency. At that time, that was just how it was. You’re married, the man is king. In this new version, she’s afforded much more agency, and we see her as a real person. Even though times have changed, and you can do whatever you want, there are still grey zones. Especially when you’re public people. When you scroll social media, you think, “Wow, amazing, happy lives.” But what’s actually going on inside a relationship? Sometimes it’s even harder to talk about because you’re protecting this perfect image. What’s more important to protect – your real self or the public persona? NM: Do you think you have answered the question of who is guilty or who is the bad guy in this trio? IC: I think we do and we don’t. TSLN: We also all have different opinions, because we are portraying the characters. As an actor, I have to defend Helga at all costs to portray her in a real way. And so does Isac, and so does Christian. According to my character’s life, I’m doing everything right. So I believe that. I think for us, playing the characters, we all have this strong belief in our own character. IC: Everybody wants a simple answer to who’s guilty and what actually went down. But the truth is probably very complicated. NM: When choosing to portray the novel as a psychological thriller rather than a period drama – what did that shift unlock, maybe emotionally or morally? IC: It really came when I reread the book and suddenly had this idea of doing it in a modern way. I called Erik and Christian, and later we called Thea, and we all agreed on this take. CF: One of the big things was changing my character’s profession; he is not a priest but a writer. Once we nailed that, it kind of unlocked everything. IC: In the original, the priest is the holy figure of that century. Today, we “pray” to celebrities instead, so we changed that. And then everyone was involved in the script. As a man writing, even though I wanted to create Helga as a complex character, I somehow still ended up with a version where she didn’t even have a job, so Thea came in with a lot of material and ideas. Everybody contributed. NM: Thea, what else did you have to change from Isac’s script when it came to writing your character? TSLN: I think it was more about finding nuances. Like, why is she still in this relationship? Does she have any friends? What is her inner life in a way that lets us understand and follow what leads her to do all these things? Writing it in a modern way also gives you a lot of freedom, because this is a classic Swedish novel that people hold very close and have strong opinions about. If we had tried to do it exactly the way the book is written, I feel like people would have focused more on how faithful it is to the book instead of the story. But when you move it
