In Inga Lindström films, Sweden looks like a picture-book setting – hard work for the production designer, who arranges every detail in series.
“Doesn’t that look like a greenhouse?” Franzi Mußmächer is skeptical. On the evening of a long day, she and Andrea Lindner bend over their cell phones. A couple apparently in love is sitting outside at a table, hundreds of candles. Behind it a winter garden also bathed in candlelight. “Or would torches have been nicer?” Asks Lindner. But in the end the candles spread more romance. The cell phone has another piece of news ready. Message from the interior propositioner: The shooting schedule has been changed, the weather forecast for tomorrow is not good and after all it’s always nice when shooting outside, it never rains in the Sweden of the Inga Lindström films. So the location changes, the follow-up shoot is one day later. That means: photograph every detail of the romantic dinner, pack up all the leftover food, put it in the refrigerator – the middle compartment is labeled “props” – and then stage it back to the millimeter the day after tomorrow.
Andrea Lindner, 41, studied interior design and is a production designer. She is the woman who conjures up color, shape, authenticity and charm in the locations that have been the backdrop for the series in the ZDF Herzkino since 2003: heartbreak with happy endings and beautiful pictures. Lindner has been on the road for their staging since the end of April. Before that, she had read scripts several times because there are always several versions. The set designer team includes prop driver Tim, exterior props Oskar, Günter, the man for the buildings, assistant Franzi and Matze, said interior prop, the man who stays on the set during the shoot, who moves props again and makes everything pleasing to the eye. Andrea and Franzi are already gone while shooting, a new picture calls.
It is located on a small islet in a lake, hidden in a forest belt. The holiday home of a German-Swedish family from Frankfurt is actually on this Lyckö and is rented out. In the film it mutates into a research station for an entomologist, i.e. an entomologist. Sounds easy, but it is a supreme equipment discipline. The Swedish house is small, angular, sloping-walled. Stefanie Sycholt is responsible for the script and direction of the third Lindström film in 2021 and she indulges in green and red. A strict color scheme in which the entomologist Liv is dressed in green, her wild sister Smilla in red. And the walls in the house also had to turn green. For Andrea and her people that meant: measuring the rooms, building frames, planking them and papering them green. Afterwards, it will and must look like it did before, a Swedish summer house, the ghost is over quickly, an average of just 20 days of shooting are planned for each film.
There is the devil in every detail and a tremendous amount of work. Any advertising in the film must be masked off, so no popular Prosecco can be seen for the romantic dinner, which Matthäus Zaborszyk brings into play. He knows graphics, he designed labels, invented a winery and a “Fjärilar”, a butterfly champagne – in keeping with the leading actress’ profession. Matthäus studies drama at the renowned Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. Joining Andreas’s team is the semester break job of a 26-year-old who did his Abitur in the Black Forest, was in the armed forces, worked for Constantin Film, is a stand-up comedian and at one point promised a friend who also wanted to be an actress: ” We’ll both be really big one day! ”With the blond, curly-haired giant, there is no doubt about that in Andreas’ team. Matthew himself stacks rather low. “The job broadens the perspective, it is a second mainstay and I learn a lot – be it masking advertising, organizing props, talking to experts on the phone.”
One such expert is “Trumpet Tommy”, with his full name Tommy Andersson, who worked as a technical advisor for the musical setting for the second Lindström film this summer. He studied music, was a lecturer at the Musikhochschule in Nyköping for years and his workshop is one of only ten places in Sweden where instruments can be professionally repaired. “I can play all the flutes, but not the trumpet,” he smiles. But he can dismantle it, tinker with it, and make it sound anew. He copied a lot from his father, “he was a technician at Skavsta Airport and played the saxophone”. He still does today, in a band at 87! Tommy lent countless instruments to the film, set up a workshop and taught actress Susu Padotzke how to expertly take a trumpet apart – and put it back together again! – builds. “She did a very good job,” he thinks and was otherwise constantly fascinated. “In the film, she starts cycling in Nyköping and after a few minutes she is in Stockholm. Indoor and outdoor shooting can be many kilometers away. ”He shakes his head with a smile, also about the Germans. “You like moose,” he says, and that someone else was walking through his garden beforehand.
Like many Swedes before, he did not know Inga Lindström. Like many, he thought there was a Swedish author of that name writing in a Bullerbu house somewhere. In the beginning, however, that was the pseudonym of the German author Christiane Sadlo, currently the directors are writing some of the scripts themselves. The films are a purely German matter, only German actors are cast, the extras are Swedes. The films aren’t showing in Sweden either, Tommy has only seen one so far and smiles again. “Everyone lives in stately homes, which they don’t do in real Sweden, Nyköping also has its hot spots.” Not all of them have a winter residence or a summer house in the archipelago. His is near Svärdsklova, where plots are being sold – extremely expensive by Swedish standards, but small. Real estate is also booming in the greater Stockholm area. “And the sun always shines in the films,” he noticed right away.
Yes, it does, the actors are young and always attractive, the world stays outside. The ZDF deliberately contrasts the ARD Tatort with the Herzkino. If you don’t have a stomach for murder, manslaughter and psychotic investigators on Sunday, you will be tenderly embraced by mild stories and beautiful landscapes. “Nobody“ looks at that ”, you might think. The ratings speak a different language. Exactly 90 Inga Lindström films have been shown since 2003, and another four were made in 2021. Heimatfilm reloaded and, in the case of Sweden, a landscape of longing that has everything Sweden needs around Nyköping – “sweden in a nutshell”: sea bays, archipelago landscapes which, in the case of the Stendörren nature reserve, can even be conquered via footbridges without any boats. A Swedish café like Hellmans und Gassen, lined with wooden houses like in Nyköping, the palace complex of Nynäs, the pretty town of Trosa. All locations, of course! In the hinterland there are more Bullerbü houses, forests, fields, mansions – and riding stables.
Horses always go, a very early film that was broadcast in November 2005 was appropriately called “Leap into Happiness” – shot by Clara Grill. She’s standing in the kitchen right now, cooking plums according to her mother’s recipe. Put a lot of straw in rum, light it up, then put the lid on! Clara is from Styria, once married a Swede and was very impressed in 2005 when Erol Sander showed up with her. “It was new, exotic for us and what excited us most was how professional they are. Afterwards everything is tidier than before. ”A compliment that Andrea gladly accepts, this time she is shooting for Clara, whose small, extremely charming Hotel Runnviken also houses two of the actors. Not far from the property, a Viking grave overlooks the lake. “The third largest in Sweden, a royal tomb, a very special place,” says Clara. How true – 360 degree panoramic view, a gentle wind sweeps through the dry grass. A few sheep look over, far out there harvest machines are making circles in huge fields of grain. A weighty silence, Sweden is deeply touching.
Back at Clara is of course the large pot, where you can tap coffee that is lukewarm all Swedish, is drunk en masse at any time of the day or night and goes perfectly with the sweet carrot cake with the fat cream on it. “That’s the best,” says Annie Rydstrand, tourism expert in Oxelösund. She is happy. “Inga Lindström does free tourism advertising for us. We also use the format for a guided tour or tour with German guests. We recently visited Swedish extras and the Germans were over the moon. “
Pilgrimage tours in the footsteps of your heart – there is still room for improvement in tourism, you can learn what hype is from the “mountain doctor”! When Andrea Lindner has conjured up all of the pictures for Inga Lindström in mid-September, she will continue with the cult format and work on two “Bergdoktor” episodes. Before Corona, the mountain doctor weeks and guided tours on carriages, e-bikes or Segways soon attracted more guests than those who visited the Wilder Kaiser even without – or despite! – wanted to experience the mountain doctor. The “Gruberhof” is overrun. Where, by the way, the breakfast scenes are always shot in the evening, because then the sun is better – which of course always shines. As if on a church tour, the fans climb up the steep old wooden stairs and there it is, the place of longing, where everyone sits in ecstasy on the bed of the Bergdoktor – well on a green plastic tarpaulin, outside of the shooting days, many objects are covered . Andrea Lindner rebuilt the attic upstairs in the “Gruberhof” because Anne and Doc now live there, on a farm that is not inhabited and is actually called the Köpfinghof. The series is now broadcast in twelve countries, in Slovakia it is a street sweeper, and when the lead actor Hans Sigl once drove to a meet & greet in a Slovak shopping center, it was like Robbie Williams – or the Pope, coming.
Andrea Lindner is almost mentally in Tyrol, but the fourth Swedish film is still pending, so the color concept will be blue, beige, rusty red and mustard. And when the sorceresses see the end products behind the scenes in 2022, even they will be amazed at one point or another: “Man, you can’t see that, it was such a job!”
