Astrid Lindgren's early life, up until the famous Swedish authoress made her breakthrough with Pippi Longstocking in 1946, is the subject of a two part documentary being made by two German production companies.

Focusing on her most difficult years, the film's plot can be expected to cover her unplanned pregnancy at the age of 18, when she was working as a reporter for a local newspaper in the southern Swedish town of Vimmerby. (Vimmerby is now home to "Astrid Lindgrens Värld" - www.alv.se - a family theme park and museum, which commemorates the storyteller.) Impregnated by her chief editor, a married man, Lindgren later spoke frequently in articles and on television about becoming a young single mother and the influences of that traumatic situation, in those times, upon her as a person and as a writer.

The production companies, Ogglies Film Production and TV 60 Film, are working with that child, Lindgren's daughter Karin Nyman, who is consulting with German script writer Benedickt Roeskau. The leading actress to fill the role of Lindgren herself has not yet been decided.

Her daughter told AFP in an interview that having Germans instead of Swedes making the documentary would add a necessary distance to the reality of Lindgren's own story, but she added that she was doubtful that the final motion picture would be able to become an absolutely correct historical document of her mother's life.
Lindgren began writing her children's books in 1946 and continued until late in her life, during which she penned such classics as Emil of Maple Hill ("Emil i Lönneberga), Madicken, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, Ronia the Robber's Daughter and the series about the strongest girl in the world, Pippi Longstocking.

More on Astrid Lindgren, the author: http://www.nordstjernan.com/news/people/2084/