According to sources, Daniel Espinosa's Madame Luna is a thriller about a refugee from Eritrea who became a refugee smuggler in Italy, with a budget of 53 million kronor. The film is a co-production between Sweden, Italy, and Denmark, and had its international premiere at the Rotterdam film festival and was also shown at the Gothenburg film festival in 2024. Few Swedes have been able to see the film since then because it is stuck in a legal dispute.
Binyam Berhane accuses Daniel Espinosa and the production company Momento film of idea theft. In January 2024, Binyam Berhane sued Momento in a California court, and in March 2024, the production company sued Berhane in return, with the copyright dispute then moving to the Swedish Patent and Market Court. On February 3 this year, Momento was declared bankrupt.
I am sorry and shocked that someone has exploited me in applications to the Film Institute to obtain large financial grants. To even see a picture of myself in their application, completely without my permission to participate, feels very wrong. It is difficult to understand how this could have happened at all. The situation feels both serious and frightening.
The police report made by Berhane concerns two people in the production, but according to prosecutor Jens Nilsson at the prosecutor's office in Stockholm, the criminal suspicions in the preliminary investigation only concern one person. The preliminary investigation concerns gross fraud and document forgery. As evidence, Berhane cites, among other things, two allegedly forged letters to the Swedish Film Institute.
Madame Luna has received 16,990,000 kronor in state support from the Swedish Film Institute, and the Film Institute believes that the process around the film has been conducted correctly. Espinosa says via his agent that he has no knowledge of the report and that he is not involved in the legal matters. ' The specific person under suspicion in the preliminary investigation has not been identified, and the current status of the lawsuits in California and the Swedish Patent and Market Court remains unclear.
I have no knowledge of the report and I am not involved in the legal matters.
Berhane has not contributed any copyright-relevant material or content to the film.