Fadern, Sonen Och Goran

Fadern, sonen och Göran (The Father, the Son and Göran) is a story about Sweden and Eritrea.About being a son and about being a father.About Dawit Isaak.About colonialism, politics and Swedish foreign aid.About parallel worlds that are linked together.This is the story of how one man and what happened one night in Eritrea almost thirty-five years ago have affected people around the world ever since.The photojournalist Göran Assbring was 33 years old when he returned to Eritrea in order to follow the Eritrean Liberation Front in their struggle for independence from Ethiopia.It was to be his last tour. Göran was shot and killed in an ambush in October 1983.Back in Akalla, his family was waiting in vain. His son, Kalle made it through his teens, growing up without his father. He was in his twenties when he travelled to Eritrea for the first time in order to see the country with his own eyes and to find closure. His journey was the beginning of a new story.Göran was not just anybody. Kalle’s father was a martyr, a hero who had died in the struggle for an independent Eritrea.Back in Sweden, a letter arrived from the Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak, informing Kalle that he had christened his son Yoran (the Eritrean version of Göran) in his memory.Kalle encounters more children who have been given his father’s name, both in Eritrea and in Europe. Göran Assbring’s documentation of the struggle for independence had formed strands in a network that continued to affect people’s lives.Eritrean domestic affairs have an impact on the lives of many Eritreans in exile, families are torn when it comes to the President, the former EPLF warrior Esaias Afewerki. One night in the winter of 2012, the political friction manifests itself as several Eritrean assembly rooms are ravaged by fire.The past continues into the future.