Göteborg Film Festival proudly presents the 2020 recipient of the Nordic Honorary Dragon Award: Stellan Skarsgård. Skarsgård will receive the Honorary Award at the opening ceremony of the festival on January 24. The day after, he will give a Master Class after the screening of the film The Simple-Minded Murderer from 1982.

For decades Stellan Skarsgård has been one of the leading actors in Scandinavia and last Sunday he won a Golden Globe for his role in the television series Chernobyl. Few Swedish actors can compete with Skarsgård’s international career in which he successfully mixes roles in some of Hollywood’s biggest productions with collaborations with several of cinema’s foremost directors, such as Lars von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Milos Forman and István Szabó to name a few.

– With existential depth, warm humanism and unique sense for details, Stellan Skarsgård has become a symbol for Nordic cinema. During the past year he has shown his artistic brilliance in Chernobyl and The Painted Bird. It feels fantastic to pay tribute to him at the festival, says Jonas Holmberg, Artistic Director, Göteborg Film Festival.

Skarsgård stars in Václav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird, which will have its Nordic premiere at Göteborg Film Festival on January 26. In addition to The Simple-Minded Murderer and The Painted Bird, the festival will also screen two more films starring Skarsgård: Breaking the Waves and Zero Kelvin.

Previous year recipients of the Nordic Honorary Dragon Award are:

2019: Mads Mikkelsen
2018: Alicia Vikander
2017: Lone Scherfig
2016: Susanne Bier
2015: Liv Ullmann
2014: Baltsar Kormákur