02/10/2015 - Unspooling from 11-22 November, the Swedish showcase follows up on hope, freedom and power with films on the refugee crisis

Every year focusing on current societal issues in its Spotlight section, the Stockholm International Film Festival – unspooling from 11-22 November – will now add new perspectives to the debate on migration via a series of features and documentaries.

“The pressing refugee crisis in Europe is the reason behind the programme, which tells stories of people fleeing or leaving their homes for different reasons,” explained Git Scheynius, director of the Stockholm International Film Festival.

So far, the selection includes the world premiere of Swedish directors Caroline Kernen and Tova Kurkiala Medbo’s They Call Us Beggars, and the Nordic premieres of Canadian director Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room [+see also:
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The section will also host the European premiere of Filipino director Lawrence Fajardo’s Invisible, US filmmaker Davis Guggenheim’s He Named Me Malala, Austrian director Jakob Brossmann’s Lampedusa in Winter [+see also:
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The festival will give out this year’s Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award – a 7.5 kg Bronze Horse – to UK director Stephen Frears (who will be in town with his latest film, The Program [+see also:
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interview: Stephen Frears
film profile]), for “never shying away from taking on people’s dark and tragic sides, doing so with warmth, passion and a sense of humour”.

The prize goes to a filmmaker “who is not afraid to take a stand for those who exist at the margins of society. His filmmaking ranges from political films with social pathos to grand epics with the biggest stars. Regardless of what form the story takes, Frears shows us that he is a director with a genuine curiosity for people’s life stories.”