The very prestige bronze horse. Only a few get to go home with this little pony. Photo: Daniel Rohlin
The Stockholm Film Festival is now up and running, and is looking better than ever. This year Sweden’s biggest film festival is graced with the presence of no other than Holly Hunter. She’ll be the head of the jury this year.
When she arrived at Norrmalmstorg square in Stockholm the other day the street was lined with people holding torches. This greeting of fire was very much appreciated as you can see in the Youtube clip below. If you are in Stockholm now on Saturday and want to see Holly Hunter you can buy a ticket to her Face2Face here. I highly recommend it to everybody that loves cinema.
This year’s festival is packed with fantastic film. Some of the highlights are Shanghai, by the Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström, and Shelter by the Swedish duo Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein. They debuted 2005 in Sweden with Storm. A film that really showed that Swedish cinema is on a new wave of filmmaking. That they then ran to Hollywood is kind of funny but who can blame them? The boys in Hollywood have bigger and more expensive toys.
The festival will also hold the world premiere of the film Four More Years (Fyra år till) by Tova Magnusson-Norling, who did the critically acclaimed film The Girl (Flickan) last year. The much beloved actor Björn Kjellman plays the lead. IMDB had a great description of what the film is about:
Political party leader David Holst, one of Sweden’s most popular politicians, is handsome, funny, popular and predicted as the country’s next prime minister. But what at first appears to be an easy victory turns into a grueling defeat as another party wins the elections and four years of leading the country, When David suddenly falls in love, the problem is not that he’s already married or that he’s fallen in love with another man. The problem is that the man he’s fallen head over heels in love with, Martin, is the only man on earth he can’t love. He is the Secretary of State for the rivaling country that won the elections.
Trailer to Four More Years (no subtitles sadly enough)
Tickets and all the films that will be screening at the festival can be found here.
P.S. Did I mention that Gus Van Sant will be present at this year’s festival? No? Well now I have.
