Synopsis
This is the story of a mysterious Swedish woman, Karin Lannby (1916-2007), spy, writer and actress… An unknown but efficient spy, who captivated personalities like Buñuel, Bergman, Lorca or Cocteau. Following her trail, we embark on an epic journey from the Spanish civil war, through neutral Stockholm during the Second World War to the Cold War in Paris. Her adventures thrust us into a story where the reality and imagination of a character worthy of spy cinema blur and intertwine.
It is a journey that takes us to different cities such as Valencia, Barcelona, Stockholm, Palermo or Paris, where Karin Lannby lived. It is told through a narrative form that is close to that of detective films. Throughout the film, different devices are intertwine to bring us close to the different facets that the character hides in a kind of mask game, based on her reports and radio messages as a spy, her films as an actress, her personal diary, her poems…
Her counter-espionage operations mix with her passion for Federico García Lorca, who she took as literary inspiration for her poems and as a motor for her personal struggle after his murder.
Finally, Karin Lannby abandons her life as a spy, renounces Swedish nationality and ends her days in a village on the outskirts of Paris, married to an ex-priest worker. There is no doubt that she took many secrets to the grave, but she left many clues about her identity hidden in her reports, files, poems and films.
Therefore, this film delves into a web of espionage to learn about the story of this woman, who used the fascination of cinema, theatre and literature to project her ideals of social justice. Faced with the barbarity of war, Karin Lannby built her own character as a spy with other weapons such as words, imagination and poetry…
Karin’s story provides the perfect excuse to reflect on the process of creating the film itself as well as the game of masks, in short, the mystery of cinema.