This paper examines how national film archives acknowledge and recognise the colonial past in their digital collections. On what terms is the heritage of colonialism made visible (or not) in the curation of transnational audiovisual memories? How is this ‘difficult’ legacy dealt with? The paper discusses how archives can foreground the legacy of colonialism as a result of collection policies, politics of representation or metadata management. It will particularly point out ways of reflecting on hegemonic power structures in the curation of online content. This approach positions the archive into an object of analysis, shifting the focus on the archive as a site of knowledge retrieval to a site of knowledge production (Foucault, 1972; Stoler, 2002). The case studies will stem from the Swedish website Filmarkivet.se, which has created access to some of the digitised collections from the Swedish National Film Archives, and their recognition of Nordic colonialism in its various shapes, such as the audiovisual memories of the Sami, as well as the legacy of the Swedish mission in sub-Saharan Africa and India. My paper argues that the Swedish case provides a useful model for other European film archives.