Screening: Deserter USA

Index presents, as a part of the public program for LIBERATION RADIO, a screening of the 1969 feature film Deserter USA.

Deserter USA is a film directed and written by Olle Sjögren and Lars Lambert and tells the story of three root-less young ex-soldiers, named Bill Jones, John Ashley and Mark Shapiro seeking refuge from the Vietnam War in Sweden. They try to find their way in this new land, engaging in the anti-war movement, working to get political asylum from the Swedish state and being constantly hunted by the American authorities. During the duration of the film more deserters arrive to Sweden and Stockholm, and they organize to create the American Deserters Committee. The film is not a documentary but instead the filmmakers Sjögren and Lambert collaborated with the actual American Deserters Committee and reconstructed real events from their own lives. In the film the deserters in most cases play a version of themselves and it makes this a unique document and an opinion piece from the height of the Vietnam War.

In Swedish press Deserter USA was seen as very “important film” which depicted a “social issue that concerns us all” as Mauritz Edström wrote in Dagens Nyheter. Jurgen Schildt said in his review in Aftonbladet that the film was a “broad and valid report, a film that prefers the comparative and reasoning engagement over the slogans and refrains.”

Program:

Deserter USA, 1969, 104 min
Olle Sjögren and Lars Lambert

Index would like to thank Svensk Filmindustri for making this screening possible.