Sometimes resistance doesn’t start on the street, but at the kitchen table. With paper. With ink. With a sentence that stays. “Humanity has lost its mind.” Astrid Lindgren did not write it for the public. She wrote it for herself, in the middle of the Second World War, while Europe was burning and Sweden was trying to remain neutral. The film Astrid Lindgren – Humanity has lost its mind opens up this private archive and shows a side of the author that remained hidden for a long time: political, radically humanistic and of uncomfortable clarity.
The diary as a seismograph of the times
Between 1939 and 1945, Astrid Lindgren records what surrounds her – and what it does to her. The diaries are not a sober document of the times, but an emotional record of a woman who cannot look away. She writes about bombing wars, about the deportation of Jewish families, about the seductiveness of democracies and the dangerous convenience of looking the other way. The film takes these thoughts seriously and reads them not as a historical retrospective, but as a mirror of our present.
A mother in moral conflict
The film shows Astrid Lindgren not as a distant icon, but as a working mother, wife and observer of an escalating world. Her work in Swedish letter censorship confronts her daily with the fates of refugees. She reads letters full of fear, hope and despair and carries the contradictions of this work with her. Between a sense of responsibility and a guilty conscience, between adaptation and inner resistance, a field of tension arises that the film reveals with great sensitivity.
Fantasy as a response to violence
While the war rages outside, Astrid Lindgren begins to tell her daughter stories. One of them is about a girl who does not submit, does not fear authority and lives her own order. The film links these narrative moments with the war diaries and makes it clear that Pippi Longstocking is no coincidence. She is a counter-figure to violence, a literary act of self-empowerment, born out of the experience of powerlessness.
Three generations, one space of remembrance
The family’s view is particularly impressive: daughter, granddaughter and great-grandson open the diaries together, read, remember and question. These conversations build a bridge between the past and the present. They show that Astrid Lindgren’s thoughts are not closed, but continue to have an effect: as questions about responsibility, civil courage and humanity.
A movie that keeps you awake
Astrid Lindgren – humanity has lost its mind is not a nostalgic look back or a classic portrait. It is a movie about attitude. About writing as a survival strategy. About imagination as a political force. And about the courage to look closely even when it hurts.
This is precisely why this film is so relevant. Because it reminds us that humanism is not a matter of course, but a daily decision.
About the author
Kinga Bartczak advises, coaches and writes on female empowerment, new work culture, organizational development, systemic coaching and personal branding. She is also the managing director of UnternehmerRebellen GmbH and publisher of the FemalExperts magazine .
