Cast and Crew: Pelle Berglund (Director);  Stellan Skarsgård, Ulrich Tukur

What It’s About: Swedish operative Carl Hamilton infiltrates an amateurish group of German terrorists in Hamburg.  A loner at heart, he must engage the group and ensure that their strike against a CIA building fails, while balancing a complex web of personal loyalties.

Why Watch it Today?: The first Sunday in March is the traditional date for the Vasaloppet, a 90 kilometer cross-country ski race founded in 1922 in Mora, Sweden.  It commemorates a legendary ski escape by Gustav Vasa, later King of Sweden, from the forces of King Christian II of Denmark.  In honor of this Swedish event, why not watch a film starring one of Sweden’s most well-known actors, Stellan Skarsgård?  Since the Danes are the enemy in the Vasaloppet story, you should avoid Skarsgård films directed by the Dane Lars von Trier.  Why not skip the obvious choices, like the Thor franchise and Good Will Hunting, and go for a film that is really carried by Skarsgård himself: Den Demokratiske Terroristen, a Swedish thriller based on a novel by Jan Guillou, one of the great Swedish suspense writers of the pre-Stieg Larsson era.  The cinematography is nothing to write home about and the plot is pretty standard action, but Skarsgård’s performance is a cut above what action stars were doing in Hollywood at the time.