Miss Flicks

Filip Hammar on his heartfelt documentary The Last Journey

The Last Journey, directed and starring Swedish TV presenters Filip Hammar and Frederik Wikingsson, is a hilarious and moving documentary about making the most of life and learning to accept your parents where they’re at.

It follows Hammar and Wikingsson, who are essentially Sweden’s answer to Ant and Dec, as they take Hammar’s dad Lars on a road trip in a tiny orange car to the South of France to see if they can reignite the spark in his life.

In the following conversation with Miss Flicks, Hammar discusses the origins of the project, showing off his emotional side on-screen and how the success of the film has affected Lars.

As two famous TV personalities in Sweden, were you worried about allowing audiences to see your vulnerable side with this deeply personal project?

We didn’t really know what this project would turn into, so didn’t really spend any time reflecting on that or worrying about it either, because I think that would be harming, you know, and it wouldn’t feel as authentic as it hopefully does. To begin with, it was just like, ‘OK, let’s take my dad on a journey, let him re-experience all those great moments from his life.’ I didn’t know that it would be such a big journey for me as well, just coming to terms with your parents not being the same anymore and accepting that to be able to have a more meaningful relationship with them.

Did you always plan to film the trip, or did the doc idea come later?

The trip was planned before. And then I had a conversation with Frederik just as friends, we are truly best friends, so I said, ‘I’m planning this trip.’ And then we started talking about it because, you know, having a job like mine, I never know what my next project is. Anything can be turned into a project. So we just talked about it, and organically this idea popped up where like, ‘Oh, maybe this is worth filming.’ And when we started filming, because we just did that, nothing was really nailed, you know, we roughly knew where we were going, but we had no idea about what’s going to happen. We had no idea what the story would be, so we sort of took a chance. That’s when we have the most fun. It’s like, ‘OK, let’s film this, let’s see what it becomes, and if it doesn’t become anything, we won’t release it.’ But, you know, it became something.

Was there ever a point where you considered stopping the whole thing? Maybe around the whole Malmö situation?

Yeah, I mean, for sure. In the movie, some people are like, ‘Hey, did you push him too hard?’… but I would never have forced my dad to embark on this journey if he didn’t want to. And also, as you see in the film, I talked to my mum. I let her make the decisions for me and for my dad sometimes; she runs the family from that perspective… Because that’s the thing with my dad, he is frail, but his disease is only just being old, you know, it’s not like he has any clear disease that would stop him from doing anything really. Being old, I totally respect that, but like my mum says in the film, you need to experience things, and I really felt that that was a good idea. I’m happy that we went, obviously, and my dad is also very happy that he went.

Were you disappointed that the cross-country road trip didn’t work out exactly as you imagined it would?

No, not at all. To me and Frederik, when making stuff, whatever that is, we always try to embrace the non-planned incidents or whatever.
You need to be curious all the time, and truly, if something happens that was not planned for, to me, it’s always like, yeah, that’s interesting. Even if you miss a flight, I think, ‘OK, what could we turn this into?’ It doesn’t always end up on-screen, but don’t fear it.

*SPOILER ALERT*

How did you settle on the ending of the documentary?

We could have made a film where we created some kind of ending where there’s hope that my dad would become my dad again, or at least a slice of the dad he once was. We talk about tap-dancing in the beginning of the film, that he always did that, you have that idea: ‘Maybe he can tap dance in the end.’ But that would not be being true to ourselves or him or the story. But obviously, the scene where I’m going there and I have this present and I give him the straw, that’s not improvised. We talked a lot about that. How do you, in a non on-the-nose way, try to tell people like, ‘Hey this was also my journey and my way of trying to tell the audience and also my dad first and foremost….’ Instead of helping him get that glass reach his mouth, it’s much better that we have a straw because we can use our time for more meaningful things. To this day, he really uses that straw, so it’s great. I think we wanted to go out on a real note, but still hopeful.

It’s hard to prepare yourself to see your parent getting really old, you know, you just cannot prepare for that. But once it happens, it’s hard, and obviously I didn’t succeed at that because I had a period of just lying to myself and not facing whatever the truth is. Once you do, it’s great, so I think try to live in the present and enjoy that as well. I see that with my dad, he’s way more at ease now when he doesn’t have his son just talking to him about like ‘snap out of it’, it’s very stressful.

How is Lars doing now?

He was, in the beginning, overwhelmed by the success of the film. I think 2.2 million Swedes out of 10 have seen this film, so his life has changed. I was taking him out to dinner in Stockholm, and I saw these people lined up outside the restaurant. Being the narcissist I am, I’ve been on TV for so many years, (I thought) maybe I should just go out and talk to them. But then I realised, woah, it’s not for me at all. You had all these people walking up to my dad, hugging him and crying and telling him how inspiring he is. So all of that, he’s sort of silently enjoying that. I can see him when I get home, and he sits there with letters and he opens letters. He doesn’t have a secret number, his number is still public, so he spends a lot of time, you know, he can be on the phone for one and a half hours with someone who just saw the film.

He is a great human being. In some ways, I think he enjoys life more. It’s not that he thinks, ‘Hey, I deserve this film’ – he doesn’t at all – but it has activated him a little bit even though he’s still in that armchair from Belgium.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

The Last Journey is in UK cinemas from Friday 20th June. Read our review here.