Swedish couple, who found Instagram popularity dancing to Shah Rukh, Salman songs, now aim for Bollywood
What began as a joke during a Thai boxing class slowly turned into an acting dream after Swedish creator Karl Svanberg discovered Bollywood films, started making reels, and found an unexpected audience in India.
Before filming reels, Karl and Ekaterina translate every song's lyrics carefully to understand every emotion and dialogue. There was a time when Bollywood’s journey across borders felt almost accidental, carried not by marketing campaigns or streaming algorithms, but by memory, migration and chance encounters. Someone’s uncle would return from abroad, surprised to find a packed theatre screening a Hindi film in a country where no one knows the language. Families would narrate stories of strangers in foreign lands humming an old Mukesh song, or a taxi driver somewhere in Europe recognising Shah Rukh Khan. For decades, Indian cinema travelled quietly, tucked inside suitcases as DVDs, exchanged through pirated CDs, or introduced through diaspora homes where Sunday afternoons meant revisiting films that made distance feel smaller.
Long before the internet flattened geography, Hindi cinema had already begun sneaking into places it technically did not belong. In parts of the former Soviet Union, Raj Kapoor became a cultural phenomenon. In Germany, Disco Dancer found unlikely devotion. Years later, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham would become a comfort watch for South Asian families living oceans away, while Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge evolved into something larger than a film — an emotional inheritance passed down across generations. Bollywood, despite often being dismissed for its excesses, had figured out something universal: sincerity travels. You do not always need to understand the language to understand longing, heartbreak or joy performed with complete conviction.
But if cinema once travelled slowly, today it moves at the speed of a thumb swipe. A dance hook escapes a film and becomes global shorthand. A dramatic monologue resurfaces as meme culture. Somewhere in between, audiences are no longer merely consuming another country’s cinema — they are performing it, translating it and, in some cases, lovingly recreating it. Which is perhaps why it no longer feels entirely surprising that a Swedish couple lip-syncing Hindi dialogues and dancing to Bollywood tracks could build an audience of millions in India, even if what they are doing still feels quietly extraordinary.
Recently, one such moment arrived dressed in nostalgia. In a reel that travelled swiftly across Indian feeds, Swedish creator Karl Svanberg could be seen dancing to Chunari Chunari — the Salman Khan-starrer track that still carries the unmistakable energy of late-1990s Bollywood exuberance. Against the backdrop of rocky cliffs and blue waters, Svanberg, dressed in black and twirling a bright red scarf in homage to the song, moved with surprising familiarity to a piece of pop culture far removed from where he grew up.
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But the reel was not an isolated experiment. By now, millions of Indians scrolling through Instagram have likely stumbled upon Karl and his wife, Ekaterina Svanberg, recreating moments from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, DDLJ, Pushpa, Baahubali, Bangalore Days and several other Indian films. Their videos — earnest, often playful and notably free of irony — have earned them over a million followers on Instagram and more than five lakh subscribers on YouTube.
For Karl, however, this story did not begin with virality. It began at a Thai boxing class and an offhand suggestion from an Indian colleague. “I was training Thai boxing. And my Telugu friend, my Indian friend, he said that because I’m tall and I can fight, he thinks I can get a role in an Indian movie, like a villain or something, if I would become famous in India,” Karl told indianexpress.com with a laugh. The idea initially sounded absurd. “That was like his idea. And I thought it was pretty crazy idea and I didn’t… First, I didn’t listen to him.”
Still curious, Karl decided to watch a few Indian films. Something clicked. “I really liked the style. I loved the movies and I loved the music. I always liked musicals before and I really liked these movies I didn’t watch before,” he said. What began as casual viewing soon turned into commitment. A few reels were uploaded. Then more. The response surprised them.
“We posted a few reels and it became a lot more popular than we thought. So, people said I’m a good actor, we are good actors and they said we got new motivation,” he said. What followed was not merely an internet hobby. Encouraged by the response, Karl began taking acting classes on weekends, gradually shifting focus away from Thai boxing. “I always thought about becoming an actor. But I never had the courage to try it. And now I became motivated,” he said. “I committed 100% to this.”
Three years later, the idea once floated casually by a friend no longer feels entirely impossible. Karl revealed that he and Ekaterina are currently “discussing with a director about a movie role. Or a movie role for both of us, actually,” though he remained tight-lipped about details.
If Karl found Indian cinema first, Ekaterina soon followed. In fact, he credits his wife for pushing him to begin posting videos in the first place. Over time, Bollywood music became a shared obsession. “She is listening to the songs all the time. She has played Chunari Chunari at home like a thousand times,” Karl joked. Their affection for Indian cinema also goes beyond simply mimicking dance moves for the internet. Before filming any reel, the couple makes sure they understand exactly what they are lip-syncing to.
“We always translate the lyrics. Because we don’t want to sing something we don’t agree with or something weird,” Karl said. “And it’s helping to play because if we don’t understand what we sing, it’s complicated to give the right emotion on the video.” Language, however, remains a work in progress. Karl knows “a bit of Telugu” thanks to his Indian friend but admits Hindi is still on the to-do list. “I didn’t learn Hindi yet. But I will learn it,” he said.
Asked which films first made him fall in love with Indian cinema, Karl quickly named Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Dangal. When the conversation turned to actors, the answer came even faster: Shah Rukh Khan. “He’s very versatile. I watched him in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Jawan, and that was just so different. That’s the range,” Karl said, adding that he also enjoys watching Amitabh Bachchan’s films. Ekaterina, meanwhile, named Telugu actor Venkatesh as one of her favourites.
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Perhaps the strangest part of their Bollywood obsession is that the couple has not yet visited India. “No, we didn’t visit yet. That’s the strange thing. We didn’t have any opportunity to come,” Karl admitted. That may soon change. With a potential Indian project on the horizon, the couple says they could move to India temporarily if things work out. Until then, India has found ways of reaching them in Sweden.
Karl and Ekaterina say the Indian community there has embraced them warmly, often inviting them to cultural events and gatherings. “Everyone is very supportive and it’s so nice. Every single Indian person we met absolutely loves that we are doing this,” Karl said. The fascination extends to food and fashion too. Karl recently tried pani puri and loved it, while their YouTube channel often features them wearing kurtas and sarees as they explore Indian customs from afar.
“We like the fashion, it’s very nice. The kurtas and the sarees, it’s very beautiful. The color, so colorful,” Karl said. “In Sweden we cannot find colorful clothes. It’s all like grey, white, black.” For now, the couple continues recreating beloved Bollywood moments from thousands of miles away. But if given the chance to make a reel with an Indian star, Ekaterina already knows her answer: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, partly because the actor won Miss World in 1994 — the same year she was born.
Karl, meanwhile, had a fittingly cinematic response of his own. “I’ll go with Amitabh Bachchan then,” he said, laughing.
Sometimes, cinema travels in unexpected ways. A VHS tape, a pirated DVD, an algorithm, a reel. And occasionally, through a Swedish warehouse manager who watched one Indian film out of curiosity and ended up imagining a future inside the world that first welcomed him through a screen.
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