What Remains (1 Star)

This is the 30th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"What Remains" is an international mash-up. It's a true story about Mads Lake (aka Sture Bergwall), a man who lived in Sweden in the 1990's. The director is Chinese, and he decided to make the film after reading about Mads. The film crew is Chinese. The actors are a mixture of Swedish and English. The film's dialogue is in English. The locations are claimed to be in Sweden, but it was actually filmed in Finland.

The film begins with Mads in a psychiatric hospital. It's not stated why. Two months before his release he began to talk about a boy who had disappeared seven years previously. He claimed to have met the boy on the day of his disappearance, but he couldn't remember what happened. There was a police investigation. The police officer was convinced that Mads was a serial killer and questioned him about other boys who had disappeared at the same time. Mads confessed to 33 murders, but his psychiatrist said that Mads was innocent. Mads was found guilty of eight murders, but 20 years later the verdict was overturned. The incident became a scandal in Sweden about how a mentally ill person could be convinced that he was a killer.

I find the story fascinating, but the film is badly made. It rambles on for 126 minutes, mostly conversations between the various characters. The film is much too long and much too dull.