Noomi Rapace and James Schamus will take center stage at the Gothenburg Fest
The Gothenburg Film Festival, which runs from January 23 to February 1, has unveiled the first heavyweight names set to bring stars to the leading Scandinavian film festival and industry event.
Following on from last year’s Thomas Vinterberg award, versatile Swedish actor and producer Noomi Rapace will receive the festival’s coveted Nordic Honorary Dragon Award on January 28, highlighting her talent in “captivating audiences around the world with her uncompromising presence and fearless expressive power,” said artistic director Pia Lundberg, who added: “Her ability to find and portray what burns, disturbs and moves us cuts across through the screen.”
Rapace, whose career spans almost twenty years and fifty films and series, is being honored with a retrospective highlighting three of her most important feature films: ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ (2009) by Niels Arden Oplev, which proved her international breakthrough and earned a BAFTA nod, the Swedish drama ‘Beyond’ (2010) by Pernilla August and the Icelandic horror ‘Lamb’ (2021) by Valdimar Jóhannsson.
Rapace will also attend the Scandinavian premiere of the vibrant Venice Horizons title ‘Mother’ alongside helmsman Teona Strugar Mitevska. “She was not a saint,” the actor said of her tour de force against Catholic saint Mother Teresa in a recent interview with Variety.
In addition to Rapace’s retrospective, an initial handful of photographs selected for the 49th edition of the Gothenburg Film Festival have been unveiled, including the opener ‘The Quiet Beekeper’ and four titles, illustrating this year’s overarching theme ‘Truth’: Kaouther Ben Hania’s ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’, Petter Næss’ ‘No Comment’, Kirill Serebrennikov’s ‘The Disappearance of Josef’. Mengele” and “Re-Creation” by Jim Sheridan.
“We live in a time where the idea of truth itself is being put under pressure. Where the boundaries between fact and fiction are often blurred: in news feeds, on social media and in political rhetoric. With Focus: Truth we want to explore how film can reflect and influence our understanding of reality,” said Lundberg.
The expected line-up of the 13 competition events will be revealed in the coming weeks, but Gothenburg revealed on Thursday that American heavy-hitter and former Focus Features CEO James Schamus will both chair the festival’s Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award jury and lead industry conversations.
James Schamus Industry Confab star guestKnown for his excellent collaborations with Taiwanese helmer Ang Lee – most notably on ‘Brokeback Mountain’, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and ‘The Ice Storm’ – Schamus. who has been a mainstay of American indie filmmaking for more than three decades, will discuss his creative visions and extensive career as a producer, writer, showrunner, educator and thinker, as well as his perspective on the current state of the global audiovisual industry.
“It is a real honor to welcome James Schamus,” said Josef Kullengård, Head of Industry in Gothenburg. Variety. “James is one of those rare industry players who have an excellent understanding of what makes a compelling story; he has a great creative mind and his voice is essential to contextualize what is happening in the industry today. He is at the heart of everything happening in the American industry today, and is still very active,” Kullengård underlined, referring to Schamus’ current gigs as a consulting producer on The Duffer Brothers’ supernatural series “The Boroughs” and a steady job teaching at the School of Columbia University. Art.
New look Nordic film market
The on-stage interview at Schamus on January 28 will form the cornerstone of the slightly revamped industry days, open to visitors to both the TV Drama Vision (January 27-28) and the Nordic Film Market (January 28-30) in their first overlapping showcase.
“As part of the new look of Nordic Film Market, we will move the film pitches and talks from the Biopalatset to the Draken industry hub – home of TV Drama Vision – to create a more insightful program and better synergies between the two parts of our industry event,” explains Kullengård. “Traditional filmmaking is the part of the audiovisual industry that needs the most innovation and transformation; we want to encourage this,” he said.
The popular TV Drama Vision, which expects around 700 delegates from more than 30 countries, will in fact concentrate entirely on ‘One transformation after another’, the headline of its 20e edition. “The theme refers to ‘One Battle After Another’ by Paul Thomas Anderson, because we feel like we are constantly in battle. In our professional and personal lives we try to adapt to the rapidly changing reality,” says Kullengård.
Led by program director Cia Edström, TV Drama Vision will engage the stories, formats and business models shaping today’s industry, through inspiring panels with more than 100 speakers and approximately 50 series in development, production and post-production.
“We will look at tomorrow’s strategies for co-production, journeys and business models, platform-fluid IP development, audience-centric approaches, smarter budgeting and sustainable production, the art of writing great stories and much more,” a statement said.
Among the guest speakers is Katharina Eyssen, creator of Netflix’s Emmy-winning show ‘The Empress’. Eyssen will be part of a more than 60 German delegation attending the industry confab in Gothenburg for a special country focus on Germany.
Watch this space for details on TV Drama Vision projects coming available in the coming weeks.
