Based on a true story

Sammanfattning: This paper consists of an analysis of two film adaptations, the documentary Lasermannen- dokumentären (Tamas/Dixelius,Sweden,2005) and the TV- series Lasermannen (Maricimain,Sweden,2005) based on the documentary novel Lasermannen - En berättelse om Sverige by Gellert Tamas. Its purpose is to find out in which ways the written text is translated into film and how these translations effect the representation of the historical world. It also investigates the ethical issues involved in the transformation. The results are reached by an ethical discussion on the contents of the films and by doing a closer reading of some scenes, to look at the use of film style in order to create the representation. The analysis and discussion are based on the theory developed and discussed by Bill Nichols in his book Introduction to Documentary. The conclusion of this analysis is that both films are traditional translations and are true to the written text in terms of structure and content. Although, both of them differ in their choice of focus and both exclude some parts of the very extensive book content. This exclusion is at loss of perspective in the case of the documentary but at gain of psychological clarity in the case of the TV-series. Both works have some ethical issues to consider, and where the documentary makers fail in some parts, the director of the TV- series has managed to avoid most of the ethical problems. According to Bill Nichols every documentary has a voice of its own and this paper defines the voices of the analyzed films.