Zlatan’s Nose Review (CPH:DOX 2025)

‘Zlatan’s Nose’ started as a crime-investigating documentary, then turned into fiction, then a portrait, then observational film. What an insightful filmmaking case study—and what a case itself.

Many thoughts came to mind, but one classic reference resurfaced, compelling when placed in a documentary context: the representation of life and its conversion into spectacle (as Debord theorized) takes the shape of what we have come to associate with documenting a subject’s narration.

The story resembles a joke’s blueprint for cinematic success. A recently placed statue of a soccer player (Zlatan Ibrahimović) in a small Swedish town gets vandalized. The missing nose preoccupies the community, circulates wildly in the news, and takes on the shape of an urban legend. A local film crew is commissioned to shed some light on the case and produce a true crime documentary to pin down the story. Claes Ekman, a self-proclaimed private detective, is hired by the three documentarists to solve the mystery.

Claes, contrary to what his profession suggests, detects crime through the ‘color’ of an expanded truth—closer to what cinema has taught him. He investigates the missing statue’s nose through conventional equipment (makes one wonder if this is a typical method used by a contemporary detective) but also through crafted abstract dialogues and recorded interactions, assuming roles borrowed from classic detective films, as if a cross-nation conspiracy might be the answer. His fixation on banal details (like the arbitrary use of foreign language and agitated tone of voice) outlines his fascination with staging truth to serve his dream of partaking in an action film. So far, his portrait leans toward a laughing matter. But with the filmmakers’ observant attention, Claes’s life unfolds: a lonely, sensitive man, someone who never quite grew up or never quite grew old. An easy-to-read man given the attention of the camera and, through skillful filmmaking hands, the chance to present the life of a simple man.

Beyond the rarity of Claes’s character and the resonance with those who share his simplicity, this shift reroutes the documentary from an easy, casual watch to a more ambling and thought-provoking film. Significant time is spent dissecting the fanaticism surrounding the soccer player and tracing possible motives for vandalizing his statue. One line in the film lingers: “If you get a statue after you die, it’s for your achievements in life. Nothing can change that. But if the person is living, like Zlatan, […] of course it will have consequences.” A pointed way to frame the case.

Among the many directions this case begs to be examined from, the social phenomenon of idolizing sports figures is one that demands calling out. But I chose to laugh at the absurdity of erecting a statue of a man so deeply immersed in fame and narcissism, to please those who built up his image, feeding both sides with vanity, only for it to backfire. A hilarious incident, made even funnier by the fact that filmmakers picked it up.

Technically, the film, stitched together from a collage of varied footage (including hidden camera and phone recordings), contains some surprisingly beautiful shots, most of them featuring Claes himself, dressed in his professional uniform of leather jacket and ’80s-style ties. These shots prove the filmmakers’ understanding of their tools, but more importantly, their ability to let curiosity, not technique, lead an odd story primed for a documentary. And so, ‘Zlatan’s Nose’, an extraordinary sample of documentary, was made; not out of skepticism, but out of a deep and honest curiosity.

World-premiered at the 2025 Copenhagen International Documentary Festival in the Nordic:Dox section. 83′, Dir: Nils Toftenow, Mathias Rosberg & Olle Toftenow / Producer: Olle Toftenow / Sweden