# Everything You Need to Know About Mikael Eskilsson's Script With No Words

Seventy-four pages, every speaker named, every line blank. A read-through at a Stockholm kitchen table showed what actors do when the writer leaves them only the silences.

By Karin Hellberg-Yusuf · 2026-11-01 · Film & TV · Stockholm

Ines Wallmark reads the first line and says nothing. That is the line. On page one of Tolv minuter före färjan her character's name sits in capitals, then a colon, then a space about the width of a thumb.

What it is. A feature script of 74 pages by Mikael Eskilsson, written in Swedish, in which every character speaks and not one word is printed. The speaker is named, the colon is there, and after it comes white paper. Eskilsson wrote it over two winters in a flat in Hägersten. He says Swedish is the language he is quietest in, so it seemed rude to use another.

The rules. There are three. Every silence has its length written in the margin in seconds: 2, 7, 11. The longest is 41 seconds, on page 58, between a brother and a sister over a pot of cooling potatoes. Nobody may mouth words. Nobody may hum.

Where it was read. At a kitchen table, in August, which was carried down into a courtyard on Södermalm because the kitchen had reached 29 degrees. Four people, a thermos, a plate of cardamom buns and one wasp. Eskilsson sat at the short end with a pencil and did not look at anyone for most of an hour.

What the actors did with the pauses. They filled them, gently, the way you fill a room before guests arrive. Gösta Nyrén, who plays the brother, turned his coffee cup a quarter turn each time. By page 20 he had turned it full circle and started again. Wallmark found she could do a whole argument with her eyebrows and one slow look at the buns.

Where they disagreed. On who owns the silence. Nyrén counted in Swedish, ett-och-två, out loud under his breath. Wallmark counted by breathing in. Their seven seconds were not the same seven seconds. Eskilsson let both stand, and wrote ok in the margin beside the argument.

What was not allowed. On page 31 the margin says 3. Wallmark laughed, a short surprised one. Everyone at the table went still. Eskilsson crossed out the 3, wrote 4, and the laugh stayed. It is the only sound in the script that was not planned, and he says it is the line he is proudest of.

What it feels like. People who were there say it was the most they had ever listened to anybody. Nobody checked a phone. The courtyard filled with a quiet that did not feel empty, only unfinished, like a kitchen after the last person has gone to bed and the light is still on over the stove.

What happens next. Sillvik Film plans to shoot in March on an archipelago ferry. The subtitles will be a blank line, held for the length of each silence. The distributor has asked twice whether that is a mistake.

Source: https://oddy.one/a/2026-11-01-everything-you-need-to-know-about-mikael-eskilsson-s-script-with-no-words/