‘Once You Shall Be One Of Those Who Lived Long Ago’ review: Bittersweet portrait of a declining Swedish mining town

Dirs: Alexander Ryneus, Per Bifrost. Sweden. 2025. 93 mins

The impermanence of life on earth is sensitively captured in Once You Shall Be One Of Those Who Lived Long Ago. Alexander Ryneus and Per Bifrost’s melancholy documentary allows us to experience the last days of Malmberget, a once vibrant mining town in northern Sweden. As residents leave and buildings are demolished, the film builds into a haunting reckoning with life, loss and death. The measured pace and mournful tone make for bittersweet viewing, but there could be a home for the film on documentary channels following its premiere in Edinburgh competition.

Shows an immense empathy with the town and its people

Ryneus and Bifrost previously charted life in Malmberget in the 2013 television film Malmberget – The Home and the Cavity. They have frequently revisited, building relationships with the inhabitants, and now return to capture a ghost town. The site of one of the largest ion ore mines in the world, Malmberget was once home to six thousand people. The few – mostly elderly – residents who remain are surrounded by landslides, crumbling buildings, growing potholes and increasing signs that nature is reclaiming the land.

Dedicated to co-producer Jonas Selberg Augustsen, who died in 2024, Once You Shall Be One Of Those takes its title from a poem by Pär Lagerkvist and conveys a sense of the universality to be found in the specifics of the Malmberget story. This is a tale of a town fading into history, the source of its prosperity now the cause of its demise as years of mining have created unstable living conditions. The soundtrack is filled with rumbling vibrations, the groaning of buildings and the shifting of soil. 

The filmmakers capture a town in decline through the activities of the few residents who have not yet left. Often eccentric, they are unidentified, except when their names are mentioned in passing conversations. The film scrutinises them in long static shots: a widow of nine years sits in the half gloom of her home, staring out into the world; a man walks the area scattering poppy seeds to encourage flowers to bloom in the future. Another man meets a longtime friend and merrily dances to the tunes played on his 1950s Paolo Soprani accordion. When someone leaves for nearby Repisvarra, or dies, they simply vanish from the frame. Everyone here has experienced some form of loss that is only amplified in the bigger picture of Malmberget’s own fading. 

Yet Once You Shall Be One Of Those is filled with images of the wintry beauty still to be found in this lost world. Landscapes are blanketed by snow and the sun shines in cerulean skies. Reindeer and rabbits saunter in places that were once the preserve of humans. Someone recalls that this was once grazing land for Sami reindeer, so perhaps history is just repeating. Elsewhere, there are danger warnings and fences surround areas that are now out of bounds, while the neon sign of the local hairdresser is still just visible above a substantial snowfall. The bare bones of a building are revealed as the frontage is ripped away. 

This gentle, unhurried film shows an immense empathy with the town and its people, making peace with the fact that it has come and gone on its journey from ashes to ashes and dust to dust. It captures the spirit of the townsfolk who are remarkably resilient and accept everything that happens as the natural order of things. They frequently respond to events with a philosophical shrug and the conclusion: “that’s life”.