On September 14, Netflix will release “The Disappearance”, a drama series about a bunch of very different characters who have worked on the ongoing and unsolved criminal mystery at Lørenskog. There are journalists, lawyers, investigators and informants who are all chasing a truth they may never find. Although the characters are mainly fictitious and the focus is a good distance away from the Hagen family, the reactions will come. Isn’t it too early? What about the ethical issues? There have already been discussions. Among other things, news’s cultural commentator Inger Merete Hobbelstad has pondered aloud whether it is not too risky to make a series about an ongoing criminal case. It is good that Hobbelstad raises the issue, but unfortunately she lacked a lot (almost all) of the information about the actual drama series. For information, I can say that despite all ethical considerations in the writing room and during production, we believe that the series is right and important to make. The series is about some basic societal conditions that we believe are uniquely illuminated by the unsolved Lørenskog case. Just now, the case reveals a side of the information society that has not been shown in this way before. Together with series creator Stephen Uhlander and a strong creative team, we wanted to create a series that examines the human consequences of working in the confusing drag that such a case is. Let me just say right away: “The Disappearance” is not a traditional true crime. It is not a series that tries to solve the question of guilt and find the final solution. Rather, it is a series about how we as a society and individuals react to the unresolved. About our need for answers when there are none and about how fear and hypotheses, rumors and speculation can lead us astray. A simple Google search for the name Anne Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen yields 3,520,000 hits in 40 seconds. Recently, Retriever’s investigation showed that over 10,000 media stories have been written about what happened at Lørenskog on 31 October 2018. On the Nordic crime site Flashback, there are currently over 7,000 pages of partly wild speculation. The Lørenskog case has become a cultural phenomenon. Tens of thousands of feature articles, hundreds of podcasts, documentaries, articles, books and TV broadcasts have been made about the mystery at Lørenskog. The police investigation has been followed with obsessive interest for almost four years. The Lørenskog case has become a media phenomenon that is moving towards chaos. This is what the series is about. “The disappearance” is told in an unusual way that shows the multitude of hypotheses: Here five different perspectives stand sharply against each other. All the characters have different views on the case – and on the question of guilt. This mode of narration does not have a central perspective or a main argument. We do not try to prove guilt or innocence, but show the different points of view. This storytelling method is called the Rashomon effect, and the phenomenon is also known in law, namely that different witnesses can have completely different and contradictory explanations for exactly the same event. Our Western rational thinking is based on the notion that there are answers to everything, if only we look long enough, and in impatience lies a confirmation of our way of thinking and way of life. But what happens to us, as individuals and as a society, when we cannot find answers, crime becomes too advanced, and the technological information society appears overwhelming? Over the past ten years, the Norwegian police and judiciary have been haunted by scandals caused by jumping to conclusions on complex cases. Quick hypotheses. Tunnel vision. Declining custody petitions. Trust in central institutions has weakened throughout the Western world. The Lørenskog case is an example of this. In the face of modern hyper-complex crime, we are confronted with the question of whether there are still universal truths we can lean towards together. We wonder if the police investigation is really credible. The media’s reports are manipulative. Do we believe that the courts can give us justice? When defense attorney Svein Holden submitted a report to the East police district for illegal leaks in the Lørenskog case, there was also an element of personal drama behind the decision. Holden himself had worked as a police lawyer in Oslo for a number of years before he started as a legal aid and defense lawyer, on the “other” side. The report not only points to a serious lack of trust in the police from a former police attorney, it also points to a larger social problem: Is the Norwegian media in cases like this a mere mouthpiece for the police, and is this symbiosis in practice a legal security problem? With “The Disappearance”, we have tried to create a drama that encompasses this modern unrest among investigators, journalists, lawyers and informants. It’s about how difficult it is to accept that sometimes we can’t find answers and about how impatience can drive us into blind spots and conspiracy theories and weaken faith in society’s basic institutions. Read Inger Merete Hobbelstad’s comment here:
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We impatient – Speech
