Have you ever wondered where people to go to escape it all? (I mean really escape, not just go to the beach and sunbathe.) It turns out that a lot of free-thinking individuals head Three Miles North of Molkom, in Sweden, at the Angsbacka festival. Intrigued by what they'd find there, Corinna McFarlane and Robert Cannan headed over to make a film about the place, and its people, and now they're here to talk to Movie Vortex about the experience...

MV. Can you tell us a little bit about where the film started?

CM: Rob and I have always worked in British independent cinema, so essentially no budget cinema, and we learned quite quickly that if you wanted to make a drama as a debut feature you'd never get enough money to create the impact that you would want to create. That instantly got us thinking about documentary, and then we were looking for an idea that would be cinematic and character led, something that would feel as close to fiction as possible so that the audience could have an experience rather than just be told facts. Then one evening I was at a dinner party with a friend and he said 'I've heard about this really wacky place in Sweden where they do all kinds weird stuff and tantric sex, you should look into it' and I instantly went to Rob and said 'I think this could be it', and he said 'absolutely, let's do it!'

RC: Essentially we were looking for a real life story that could unfold over a short period of time, and it had to be cinematic. This ticked all the boxes: it all happened in one location so we could shoot cheaply, it had wacky characters, people going on a journey and the setting was great but also achievable.

MV. What was your first direct experience of Angsbacka festival?

RC: Well it's a year-round commune, and the first time we were there was after they'd decided they were going to let us film there and asked us to come out there and meet face to face so they could sus us out.

CM: And this was four weeks before the actual festival so we were invited for two days to go to the commune, so we... now I think about it, this was utterly ridiculous... but we prepared a comprehensive pack with our CVs, a reel, our ambitions and all sorts of stuff. So we arrived almost suited and booted for a production meeting and were met by this eccentric guy with flowing hair who drives up to this beautiful mansion in the middle of nowhere and leave us at the door there. So we go in, there's no-one there to meet us, just a beautiful blonde woman carrying a baby and she says 'hi' and we explain we're their to meet the owners, so she takes us upstairs and we're thinking 'what're we going to do?' When we got into the first room there were loads of people just lying on sofas, people embracing, two women massaging each other, children running around, nobody gave a toss that we were there.

So we sit there for between half and hour and an hour just drinking green tea all suited and booted and feeling like idiots with our pack, then the owners arrive and we hear the others muttering that it's them, and they ask 'who are you?' In retrospect we know that was a joke, but at the time we hastily explained we were there to talk about the film, and they just stopped, dead, and looked at us. Then the room all stopped, and looked at us. It went on and on and on. It felt like such a long time to be stared at.

RC: It felt almost like a computer searching through your soul or something.

CM: And then, literally, he said 'feels good, you can do it'. And that was it!

MV. Almost like an automatic hippie scan?

CM: (Laughs) I think also they got that this wasn't for TV or anything, we were an indie, and could see what we were about.

RC: I felt that they saw how passionate we were about making this film .

CM: But maybe it was just that we look like hippies!

MV. Were you ever worried about how cynics might buy into the film?

RC: The key is that we knew this film had to be about characters, and as much as we could plan the characters we wanted to find, it all happened very quickly once we were there, the one thing we knew we needed in the group was a 'fish out of water' character. Someone who's new to the experience who might be reticent or cynical, and that comedy, drama and all of that would come from the contrast between this and the experienced people. That, for us, would be the person the audience could identify with as them. Nick turned out to perfect.

MV. Did you find that you shared this journey with them? Did you leave happier for the experience?

CM: I think there's a sort of twofold thing here. You have to remember that this was our first film as directors so when we got there we felt we'd struck cinematic gold and that elation didn't subside! The whole time we were there we just felt that it was amazing and it was going to be a great film, and we jumped around going 'ooh! Shoot this! Shoot that!' But this was coupled with a lot of de-armouring events we were witnessing. Although we didn't tale part because we were filming 18 hours a day, if you're sitting and watching people go through sometimes quite challenging emotional stuff, and crying or lost in this sexual... thing, something does change in you. It's a big honour and privilege to be allowed to be there, from a human perspective, and we did come away somewhat more enlightened. But primarily we were enlightened and liberated as filmmakers, because you could just do what you want. We even rolled around with the camera like a baby! If I was in Tooting Bec I don't think I'd have been comfortable directing a cameraman to do that.

MV. Were there some moments that were hard to film? Because people seemed sometimes to go into dark places.

RC: There were certain things that we felt we couldn't include in the final film because they were just too dark. For instance in the sweat lodge -

CM: Which is a dark pit in the middle of the forest, covered with tarpaulin, and then crammed full with 30 people.

RC: Yeah, they go into this extreme sauna with really intense heat while a shaman leads you through a purging exercise. And Mervi, one of the central characters who suffered a series of unfortunate events, really had a hard time coming out of the sweat lodge. She was semi-conscious and convulsing, she needed medical attention. But the sweat lodge is a key scene but first of all it didn't feel like we could keep filming in that situation and this would not have had a place at this point of the film.

CM: And also the film would have become to focussed on Mervi rather than the group dynamic.

RC: Yeah, we wanted really to weave the character stories together, finding this balance between light and dark. So certainly there were things in the film that were a bit too much.

MV. Do you think it speaks volumes about the film that you had a Swedish celebrity turn up, only to be overshadowed by the stories of the ordinary people there?

CM: The interesting thing about being British people filming in Sweden was that we weren't tied to the culture at all. We could go in with a blank canvas and fill it with the colours we felt coming from the place. So we didn't even know that Regina Lund is the Swedish Madonna, we were too busy trying to get our group together and it was her manager who heard British filmmakers were going and then said that Regina would be happy to be part of that group. But we were clear that unless she's there on the day we organise the group she can't be in it. And in true diva style she just turns up on day two, when we've got our group all sorted, and comes and sits down - just like you see in the film. Of course it's an interesting plot point but we were kind of shocked. But ultimately she couldn't handle it. Everyone was really open, really honest and on a real opening up, truth mission, and if you're a celebrity you're conditioned to layer yourself with pretense really so that's why she had to fall away because it wouldn't be worth it.

RC: And I think what the interesting tension of her character was that she's so famous that she's used to running from the paparazzi and the tabloids, and she feels that they're constantly writing things about her that aren't true, but at the same time she's a celebrity and likes the limelight. So she approached us to be in the film to show her true self and let the public who she really is, and at the same time her fame is a kind of prison because as the others try and open up it holds her back. So she wasn't able to continue and delve into the experiences in the same way that the non-celebrity characters are.

MV. Have all of the characters seen the film now?

CM: Different characters saw it at different places actually, some saw it at Angsbacka the year after when we brought it back. Some saw it at film festivals, at their home town, in front of an audience of 500 - a large proportion of which was their friends, family and acquaintances! Siddharta, the Viking lookalike lethario saw it at the Gothamberg film festival where we won the audience award, it's a big thing in Scandinavia, a massive deal, and it happens to be his home town. We sat through that almost clutching the chairs thinking that he might just knock us out, but people found him hilarious throughout. After the film was over he was called up to the podium and people were clapping, and we're thinking 'oh no', but when he was asked how it was he just said 'You know what I've got nothing to be ashamed of because I'm only human, I never said I was perfect, and none of us are perfect, so I liked watching the film' and everyone just clapped.

RC: And then his daughter came up to me and said 'Wow, you've really captured my dad well!'

CM: Then we knew we'd done well! I mean we never tampered with the footage, so there was never a fear that we would do a Big Brother thing and cut the nasty bits together. We just worried that people weren't ready to see themselves like this.

RC: And also at the festival they're so immersed in these things that they really do lose a sense of themselves. What changes it in terms of a film is that people will only then, in this condensed version of things, will they see the patterns that they're involved in. And they can't deny it as truth, but it's still shocking and they did describe it as the end process of their therapy where they see it again and live through it.

MV. Do you think you were lucky to find such a free, liberated place in which to make your film, given how many documentarists have to fight for their footage?

CM: I think you make your own luck.

RC: You have to be good at persuading people to come on side.

CM: And at seeing how to make a story. I mean we made this completely independently, outside even of the independent film industry. We made on peanuts.

RC: ... borrowed peanuts...

CM: And then we had to take jobs for the six months after shooting it, making propaganda for an Indian company  but that's another story, and then we had to give up everything so we had the time to edit without paying rent.

RC: The key was the time, and by doing it this way gave this time to have that creativity to make it how it is.

Want more? Read our review of Three Miles North of Molkom, or check out it's cool launch event with Russell Howard.