A 112-Minute True-Story World War II Drama Is Netflix’s Latest Sleeper Hit

5 days ago 12

Published Feb 22, 2026, 9:55 AM EST

Rohan Naahar is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Dad content has a bulletproof history on streaming platforms. So, it makes all the sense in the world for a movie aimed directly at older men to emerge as a new sleeper hit. Films such as Nuremberg, the World War II-era courtroom drama starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, have done exceptionally well on the PVOD charts recently. Nuremberg grossed more than $40 million worldwide against a reported $10 million budget theatrically before emerging as a home video hit; it has since spent nearly two months on the charts. Home video has also been kind to Greenland 2: Migration, the recent big-budget box-office bomb starring Gerard Butler. This is not to mention older hits geared toward dads — shows such as Yellowstone and Landman — which maintain a perpetual presence on PVOD charts. And now, these titles have competition from a new movie.

The movie in question, much like the breakout Netflix series Unfamiliar, hails from Europe. It tells the real-life story of a man named Gösta Engzell, who, during World War II, saved the lives of innumerable Jews by leveraging all the power his bureaucratic position in the government gave him. Unlike a thematically similar classic, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, this film examines how government red tape can impede human decency during dark times. Directed by Thérèse Ahlbeck and Marcus Olsson, the movie in question stars Henrik Dorsin as Engzell. In both David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its original Swedish adaptation, based on Stieg Larsson's novels, the Swedish government's neutrality during World War II is portrayed as the origin of generational trauma.

Here's the New World War II Drama Breaking Through on Netflix

The new movie is called The Swedish Connection, and it has already made its mark on the global Netflix viewership chart. According to FlixPatrol, it was the seventh-most-watched movie on Netflix around the world on February 22, when Ridley Scott's Prometheus topped the list. The Swedish Connection outperformed the Val Kilmer-led spy movie The Saint, but trailed The Addams Family and The Addams Family 2 — the two recent animated adaptations of the classic property. Despite early success, The Swedish Connection doesn't yet have an official critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. You can check it out on Netflix. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.