The Home and the Cavity / Malmberget

Life in Malmberget, a mining community in Sweden’s Gällivare municipality, is marked by the prospect of its disappearance. For 250 years, the town’s fate has been tied to mining. Excavations now extend beneath the community itself: continued extraction threatens its collapse, while stopping would take away its livelihood.

The documentary introduces people living at the edge of the mine, where the contrast between the individual and the enormous industrial machinery is particularly stark. Can you resist the very industry that feeds you? What is life like in a community that will soon vanish altogether?

The film has a tragicomic undertone: warmth and humour remain close at hand amid fear and uncertainty. Alexander Rynéus and Per Eriksson followed events and residents’ reactions over the course of a year.