The themes of loss, change, home, and the transient nature of life at a time when “communities across the world are being erased by industry, climate change, and political decisions” are explored in kaleidoscopic form in Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago, the new documentary from Swedish filmmakers Alexander Rynéus and Per Bifrost that is world premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Sunday.

It is the only documentary in the competition lineup of the 78th edition of the Scottish festival. The documentary may focus on Malmberget in northern Sweden to explore what remains when a place vanishes – not only physically, but also emotionally and culturally – but the film’s themes are universal.

Malmberget is one of the world’s largest underground iron ore mines. The town is being dismantled piece by piece, leaving behind boarded windows, demolished homes, and empty streets. Yet amid the ruins, life continues – quietly reshaping itself as nature begins to reclaim the land.

“In a small mining town in the north of Sweden, we witness a melancholic, humorous, and sometimes absurd last epoch of a place,” reads a synopsis. “Beneath the town’s fading streets lies one of the world’s largest underground iron ore mines – an engine of both prosperity and disappearance.” The film is told through the episodic experiences of some of the town’s last residents, “holding on to a sense of home even as the ground beneath them collapses.”

The filmmakers began their artistic relationship with Malmberget in 2013 with the hour-long TV film Malmberget – The Home and the Cavity and returned to document the town’s dissolution for installation works before their new film, which is their second feature and their first feature about Malmberget. 

Ahead of its world premiere, THR talked to Bifrost and Rynéus about Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago, why they keep returning to Malmberget, how the fear of death plays into the film, and what’s next for them.

“We grew up together in a place that had many mines that are now closed,” Bifrost tells THR. “Malmberget is like 1,000 kilometers from where we live, but it is the sort of place that we felt could be like home, but was on the brink of vanishing. So there was a connection that we felt.”

Rynéus recalls reading, when the duo first researched the town, how a researcher noted that people’s sleep gets affected by mining. “There was this very human feeling of living above one of the world’s biggest underground iron ore mines,” he tells THR. “It was this mood of this place that we started to just film, and now it’s been quite some time that we have been filming there.”

Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago shows locals in various situations cinéma vérité-style. “In a way, it’s a collaboration between the people we film,” explains Bifrost. “Over the years, I think, we both started feeling that we know more people in Malmberget than we know in the village that we grew up in.”

Rynéus laughs and agrees. “We have spent so much time there, also while not filming, but just meeting people and getting to know each other during these special circumstances of everything disappearing,” he shares. “The filming became something we also did together with these people. So it felt very natural.”

For previous films, “we film more obvious things, such as conflict-oriented stuff,” he adds. “Over the course of time, these kinds of elements started disappearing, because we got closer to the people. And we started to notice underneath all this vanishing, a kind of resistance and resilience, making things like everyday life work, even though everything is falling apart around you. So, the film needed to suit that mood.”

The filmmaking duo says they like taking their time while working on documentaries, and time is a key element that the movie explores and helps with its focus on mood. “The element of time is very much how we approach it to get very close to the people and get personal snippets from different angles of this situation,” says Bifrost. “In a way, it all boils down to the themes of loss and how you cope with loss.”

Describing the current state of Malmberget, Bifrost says: “The town is totally vanished, but there’s still a conflict about the church. And then you have these towns and areas around the town. Our first film was very much about how to solve the situation, with everyone in the end getting grouped into different groups set to move at different stages. Now, in this film, we try to understand what happens when all those stages are gone. It was very much about capturing the last epoch when the main town is being demolished.”

Could the doc duo return to capture a future Malmberget after two past feature docs, the new one, and two exhibition films about it? “We’ve been doing this for 15 years in this place. The town is disappearing, so we thought this film is finished, so now this is the end for this,” Rynéus tells THR. “But since we like long time scales, we’re already thinking about whether it is possible to make a film with just nature and animals in the future. We’ve been talking about it.”

Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago is also an illustration of how in life, things can often have benefits and risks or downsides at the same time.

“People have very strong feelings against the mining company, but they also understand that the town was built because of the mine, so there is this very complex feeling,” Rynéus highlights. “So, it’s not either-or.”

Adds Bifrost: “This is why it’s also a film about acceptance, in a way. In the end, you have to accept the situation. It’s the same thing with life and death. I mean, you have to accept that we have our time here on Earth, and then we’re not here [anymore].”

What are Bifrost and Rynéus working on next? “The next feature documentary we are working on together is about faith in Sweden,” says Rynéus. “It’s often described as one of the world’s most secular countries. The topic is to see if this statement is true. So we are in Sweden, filming churches, which are often quite empty.”

Given that the two come from the countryside, “we want to have this angle of visiting churches and communities in the countryside,” Bifrost tells THR. “In some churches, for Sunday Mass, there are only three people attending. But then, when something happens in a small community, you can have the whole church filled.”

Once You Shall Be One of Those Who Lived Long Ago is a long title, but it also stands out. Where did it come from? It’s a sentence from a poem by a Swedish poet, Pär Lagerkvist, that the filmmaking duo likes. “We both liked that book very much, but when we found that sentence, we just felt it was what the film was about,” recalls Rynéus.

“The poem itself has very much to do with nature and how everything goes back to its original state,” concludes Bifrost. “In a way, Malmberget is like every place that is disappearing. So the story is universal. That’s something that we really want to emphasize with this film.”