27/10/2022 - Properly returning to business this year, the Swedish gathering has grand plans for its 33rd November cinema sessions

“We’re full-scale this time around – back in business after a couple of pretty rough years,” beamed Git Scheynius, long-time and tireless director of the Stockholm International Film Festival, as she and programme head Beatrice Karlsson unveiled the 2022 programme a couple of weeks ago at the House of Culture & City Theatre in downtown Stockholm. Playing out from 9-20 November and comprising 130 films from 50 countries, the line-up for the festival’s 33^rd edition was duly dubbed both “colourful” and “powerful” by the presenters, who have overseen a thorough handpicking of the best “pearls” from the top A-list festivals and more, not least some of the stronger Nordic titles of late.

On this regional note, things will open with a national gala premiere of Tarik Saleh’s drama of intricate intrigues set within Egypt’s religious hierarchy of power, Boy from Heaven [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tarik Saleh
film profile]. The film, rewarded with the Best Screenplay Award at this year’s Cannes, is Sweden’s official submission for the 2023 Oscars. Director Saleh will conduct a master class, and the movie’s co-star Fares Fares will receive the festival’s prize for career recognition, the Stockholm Achievement Award, for his dynamic three decades of work taking in titles such as Jalla! Jalla!, Zero Dark Thirty and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, to name but a few. Also honoured this year is British director Sam Mendes, the recipient of the Visionary Award for his artistic contributions. Mendes will be presenting his latest work, Empire of Light [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], a fitting love letter to the very movie theatres that this festival plans to fill up. Other luminaries on the playbill include Ali Abassi and Holy Spider [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ali Abbasi
interview: Ali Abbasi
interview: Zar Amir Ebrahimi
film profile], Park Chan-wook and Decision to Leave, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Broker, Luca Guadagnino and Bones and All [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], and Laura Poitras’ recent Venice winner All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. Among the newcomers, the curators were keen to highlight Alauda Ruiz de Azúa's Lullaby [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa
film profile], Frances O’Connor’s Emily [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Davy Chou
film profile], all three entered in the main competition for the Bronze Horse. New faces will also be given some visibility via the 1 km film competition for young directors and the Zalando Rising Star presentation of young actors on the brink of breaking through, watched and weighed up by discerning expert juries.

A close-up and urgent focus on the cinema of Ukraine is also on the programme. Six titles are being presented – Freedom on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Butterfly Vision [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maksym Nakonechnyi
film profile], How Is Katia? [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christina Tynkevych
film profile], Mariupolis 2 [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], A Rising Fury and Klondike [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maryna Er Gorbach
film profile] – many of them depicting the current situation or the events leading up to it. The initiative, underlined Scheynius, is aesthetic as well as political, and the festival will hold a special work-in-progress presentation of selected Ukrainian projects with a cash award up for grabs. This cooperative effort, carried out in conjunction with the Swedish Institute, the Odesa International Film Festival, the Ukrainian Embassy in Sweden and various producer organisations, will also contain a support package for the distribution of Ukrainian films in Sweden.

The full programme of the festival can be found here.