Caliphate

Caliphate (Kalifat) is an eight-episode SVT thriller written by Wilhelm Behrman and Niklas Rockström and directed by Goran Kapetanović, broadcast in January and February 2020. Filmjölk Studios produced the series in close consultation with Swedish national-security and counter-terrorism specialists, and it was acquired by Netflix for global distribution shortly before broadcast. Kalifat represents the most ambitious treatment of the European foreign-fighter phenomenon to date in scripted television, and its release came near the end of the political cycle during which the question of what to do with European citizens detained in the Al-Hol and Roj camps was at the centre of mainstream debate in Sweden, France, the UK and Germany.

Aliette Opheim plays Fatima Zukic, a Säpo analyst whose family history shapes her professional reading of an unverifiable lead; Gizem Erdogan plays Pervin, a Swedish woman now in Raqqa attempting to make contact with the Swedish authorities. The third strand follows a Stockholm secondary-school student (Nora Rios) and her two friends, drawn into a recruitment process led by their student-teacher Ibbe (Lancelot Ncube). The screenwriting holds these three lines in parallel for the duration of the season, and the camera departments led by Jonas Alarik shoot Raqqa, Stockholm and the suburban schools with a deliberately even hand.

Critics in The Times, The Telegraph and Decider placed Kalifat among the most accomplished thrillers of 2020. The series won the Kristallen for Best Swedish TV Drama in 2020.