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FALLET
PITCHDECK
Who is Micke?
MICKE is an average guy who works with IT. He goes through the motions of his life, but something is tugging at him. He knows he wants things, he has a life design but he doesn’t know how to put it into action. Until he meets Lotta.
What does he want:
He wants material security. He wants to climb the social ladder. He wants to be accepted and does not want to be alone.
What is the catalyst:
The catalyst for Mikael's story occurs when the real estate market crashes following the events of 2008. Unlike many others who lose their homes in the global housing market crash, Mikael remains unaffected. This sense of invulnerability leads him to become overconfident and greedy. He takes advantage of the low-interest, no-payment principal loans available to him to purchase multiple homes.
The catalyst for Mikael's story occurs when the real estate market crashes following the events of 2008. Unlike many others who lose their homes in the global housing market crash, Mikael remains unaffected. This sense of invulnerability leads him to become overconfident and greedy. He takes advantage of the low-interest, no-payment principal loans available to him to purchase multiple homes.
What is at stake for Micke?
Micke falls down a rabbit hole when he becomes personally bankrupt. He loses his mind, his home and family. Isolation, an outcast of society and life are at stake.
What is the central conflict?
Micke leverages a high roller lifestyle by buying apartments. When the 2008 financial crash happens, Sweden is hit in the real estate sector. "Postcode" millionaires like Micke lose their valuations and must pay the debt.
MICKE
The Banker
Fredric Ahlseus - bank loans officer is one of Micke's antagonists. He wants to sign up as many loans as possible for his bank to earn the interest on the mortgages. The Stockholm housing market is at a boom in the 2000s. Change of laws in the borrowing system is making it possible for banks to take risks that they were not able to in the late 1990's, when Sweden was on the brink of a state collapse. Fredric represents the system of the housing loan market and precarious risk based on a financial system that is vulnerable to external shocks that can trigger banks loans to default.
The Antagonists
Morgan Ehnrnell - real estate agent. Morgan Ehrnell represents the real estate system. He is the sales agent that keeps feeding Mikael options on how to maximise his wealth through new apartments that are getting built. "Buy now and borrow on the collateral and just keep moving the interest." It's not illegal, everyone is doing it until it no longer offers to profit on the premium. When that happens, the chips start to fall. It's a risky business.
The Real Estate Agent
Morgan Ehrnell
The Real Estate Agent
Mikael Svenbo
Protagonist
Fredric Ahlseus
The Banker
Lotta Svenbo
Wife
Mats
Police
LOTTA
Lotta Svenbo - is an important supporting character. It is through their relationship that we see Mikael's motives, his desires, and eventually his fall. Lotta wants the life-style and standard of living that Mikael wants to share with her but she also feels he suffocates her. He is is playing the "breadwinner" at the cost of her own independence and this frightens her. Mikael is desperate to be needed to that point that he is making her useless. Lotta is becoming a kept housewife, something she promised she would never become. When their daughters are born, she reflects on the future she wants for her daughters and the man she no longer recognises.
FALLET SYNOPSIS
Fallet is a financial thriller about Mikael Svenbo who becomes personally bankrupt after losing his home in the 2008 financial crash. He avenges the banker and the real estate agent that he believes misled him and landed him homeless, living rough under a bridge. With no contact to his wife and daughters, Mikael begins to lose his grip on reality. He falls down a rabbit hole and he needs to get out before it's too late.
Stockholm is the location while also a character of the story world. Fallet is set entirely in Stockholm. Particular landscape is the juxtaposition of the construction of new apartments in the gentrification of the city and segregated and neglected urban areas around Stockholm.
Stockholm
The World of the Story
The banking and real estate world
The bank financing and real estate world go hand in hand like horse and carriage. This world is the story engine that motivates our main characters to make the choices they make and its consequences.
The Story Design
Fallet takes place in the present time but uses flashbacks and voice-over as a narrative device. The time intercuts with flashbacks when we establish key turning points in Mikael's life such as his first home investment during the real estate boom until it crashes and he comes falling down with it.
We mark key time epochs with historical milestones such as the death of financier, Jan Stenbeck ( 2002) arrival of Facebook, iPhones, smart tv's and Tesla EV's. But importantly, the dramatic gentrification of Stockholm in the last two decades is an aspect of the production design and story-telling.
The Character Arc
The consequences of failure for Mikael is high for Mikael. Losing Lotta and his daughters, losing his material wealth, losing his mind and losing his freedom. He cannot go back to being a "nobody".
Mikael goes from being the guy that has achieved what most want; owning an apartment in inner city Stockholm but he takes it too far. He is obsessed about having all the material trappings with it. This turns him into man driven by hate and revenge when he loses everything. His external change is from a man that had it all to his internal change to man that is desperate and who has lost his grip on reality and nothing to lose.
Mikael falls hard and must find a way to redeem himself again. We need him to because we want to see him get back up.
Mats- the cop
Supporting Character
Mats gets to know Mikael as one of the homeless characters he sees regularly on his beat with his partner. In the cold winter nights, he gives him a lift to the homeless shelter.During this short rides, Mats learns more about Mikael. Not all those sleeping rough under the bridge are addicts.
Mats sees the changes happening around him in society. More and more people have lost their homes and more people homeless. Some join gang syndicates, turn to petty crimes like stealing food and others like Mikael fallen down a rabbit hole that he is struggling to get out of but the social system net does not catch people like Mikael who have been productive members of society one day and have nothing the next. As far as Mats is concerned, he believes the system has failed people like Mikael and Mikael has also failed himself.
There is a part of Mats that can relate to Mikael's feeling of injustice and powerlessness. If he thinks about it too long, he would probably do exactly the same.
Amir is a practical man - not as idealistic as his partner, Mats. At the end of the day all Amir wants is to go home in one piece -alive to his wife and kids. Being a cop is not the way it used to be anymore. Sweden has the largest gang violence in the OCED. Times have changed. Amir has one mission this night before Christmas, make it back in the morning and on a plane to Spain with his wife and kids. How complicated can it be?
Amir - the cop
1/1
SHOW CROSS
Themes:
Fallet is a societal drama and financial thriller
Greed, Financial Systems, Society, Family, Powerlessness, Housing markets, Revenge, Loss, Redemption, Mental Health, Loneliness, Outsider.
Lars Wilderäng is the best-selling author of Fallet with over 800,000 sold.
Arvet Agency has acquired the options to develop and produce the feature film, television and gaming adaptation.
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