Konspiration 58 [2002 sub-eng]

Conspiracy 58 (Swedish: Konspiration 58 or KSP58) is a Swedish mockumentary from 2002, produced by the Swedish public television. The plot of the film is that the 1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden didn't really take place, but was faked and exists only as forged television and radio coverage in a conspiracy between American and Swedish television, the CIA and FIFA as part of the Cold War. In the film it is said that Sweden did not have the economic or technical resources to actually host such a large event. In the plot, the American motive for doing this was to test the effectiveness of televised propaganda. When the film originally aired, the audience was not told in advance that it was a mockumentary, giving the impression that Conspiracy 58 was a regular documentary film.

A large amount of "evidence" was presented. For example, there was analysis of television recordings of the matches, where houses can be seen in the background that never actually stood there. The programme also analyzed how the shadows of the players in the field were falling, and were angled in a way that is not possible in Sweden if you study the position of the sun at the time. The Chairman of the association, Bror Jacques de Wærn, who was employed by the Swedish National Agency for more than twenty years, states that he has looked for evidence that the tournament really took place, but didn't find anything. After the end of the film it was revealed that the film was a mockumentary.

The aim of the film, according to the director Johan Löfstedt, was to illustrate how historical revisionism (in particular Holocaust denial) works and to highlight the importance of source criticism when getting information from, for example, the media.[1]

The majority of the characters in the film are real celebrities who were playing themselves.