Welcome to the largest film festival of the Nordics
The Göteborg Film Festival is the largest public film festival in the Nordic region and the premier annual meeting place for the Nordic film industry. The festival spans eleven days at the turn of January and February each year and is organised as a hybrid event, featuring both in-person and digital film screenings.
The Göteborg Film Festival was founded in 1979 and now attracts approximately 270,000 visits, both in cinemas and online. Around 250 films from 80 countries are screened during the festival. However, it is not just about film screenings; the festival also offers discussions, workshops, parties, concerts, and a wide range of other activities. A carefully curated selection of films is shown simultaneously at our festival cinemas and in our digital theatre, Göteborg Film Festival Online, allowing the anticipation and excitement of a festival premiere to be experienced in living rooms across Sweden.
Göteborg Film Festival serves as the leading market for films and series in the Nordics, annually attracting over 2,200 industry delegates and journalists from more than 50 countries. Nordic Film Market showcases new and upcoming Nordic films and talents, TV Drama Vision conference, dedicated to drama series, brings together international business trends, creative talent, and key professionals, and the Nostradamus project presents foresight on the near future of the audiovisual sector.
Vision
”To serve as the hub of film culture in the Nordic region.”
Mission
”To create opportunities for meaningful films from around the world to reach audiences and to challenge people's perspectives on society and one another.”
Programming committee
Each year, the festival's programming committee travels the globe to select films to bring to Göteborg. In their work, they attend many of the world's largest film festivals and markets, including Cannes, Venice and Berlin. The list of festivals where the committee scouts for films is extensive. Additionally, around a thousand films are submitted to the festival annually through the submission process, and every film is reviewed by the committee.
The films are selected based on the following artistic guidelines:
- Quality
- Relevance
- Diversity
- Appeal
- Exclusivity
- Contextualisation
Our other activities
The Göteborg Film Festival is not just a film festival at the beginning of the year – it is an organisation with a variety of activities and focus areas, all rooted in truly great film.
Foto: Per Bornstein
Göteborg Film Festival Prisma
Göteborg Film Festival driver ett omfattande arbete året runt. I oktober anordnas barn- och ungdomsfilmfestivalen Göteborg Film Festival Prisma, som är en viktig del av festivalens målsättning att erbjuda publiken en mångfald av filmer från olika delar av världen. Genom sitt filmprogram och sina kringarrangemang (workshops, samtal och andra upplevelser) vill Göteborg Film Festival Prisma verka för att utveckla ungas visuella kompetens, samt uppmuntra dem till att själva uttrycka sig genom filmmediet.
Göteborg Film Festival Open Air
Göteborg Film Festival Open Air är en utomhusbio och pop-up-version av Göteborg Film Festival. Syftet är att nå ut till fler Göteborgare och skapa ett sug för att gå på filmfestival. Vi visar film gratis under bar himmel, för att låta fler få ta del av festivalens filmprogram. Men också för att kunna skapa en synlighet för våra samarbetspartners under fler delar av året. Utomhusbio-konceptet har också framgångsrikt tagits ut på flera platser runt om i Västra Götaland.
Foto: Ola Kjelbye
Educational activities
Idag har rörliga bilder ersatt text som det viktigaste kommunikationsmedlet. Särskilt unga människor ägnar enormt mycket tid åt rörliga bilder, både sådana som producerats av professionella filmskapare och sådana som de skapar själva. Trots det lägger skolan enorma resurser på att lära unga att formulera och förstå olika typer av texter, men väldigt lite tid på den rörliga bildens grammatik.
Göteborg Film Festival's film education initiatives aim to inspire children and young people to express themselves artistically through moving images, expose them to a broader diversity of film representations, and provide them with tools to critically reflect on the moving images they both see and create. The goal is to empower children and young people to find their own voice, foster artistic development, and encourage democratic participation.
Our approach is based on the combination of creating and viewing. By making films together, we aim to ignite young people's creative joy and willingness to express themselves. Through watching and discussing films, we seek to strengthen their visual literacy and establish a connection between the images we see and those we create ourselves.
We also aim to inspire more people to dream of becoming the directors and actors of the future. Currently, Sweden's population is not reflected in those working professionally in film and moving images, either in front of or behind the camera. Large groups of people do not feel welcome in the film industry, or even in the cinema. This is both a democratic and artistic issue, as the door to the industry is perceived as closed. Through our work with children and young people, we aim to open that door to more people.
Draken Film – the festival's own streaming service
Draken Film is Göteborg Film Festival's own streaming service for high-quality films from around the world, and also serves as the home for the festival's digital cinema during festival week. The ambition is to be a knowledgeable, relevant, and bold curated streaming service that broadens and deepens the film offering throughout the year. It aims to be a constant reference point in Swedish film culture, a guide to both film history and contemporary cinema, for both new and established audiences.
Draken Film was created in 2014 as part of fulfilling Göteborg Film Festival's mandate to promote the widest possible distribution of valuable films from across the world through existing and future media, and to contribute to a creative and far-reaching discussion about film as an artistic medium. The background to this initiative lies in technological advancements and changing consumption patterns, which have significantly altered the film market. These changes have resulted in a considerable decline in the diversity of films available for home viewing, with quality films and those from smaller linguistic areas being hit the hardest. This transformation has led to a homogenisation of the content offered by dominant market players.
Today, the international film market is heavily dominated by a few production countries, and a small number of global players – particularly American – hold incredibly strong positions, giving them immense political and cultural influence. This monocultural film landscape has both artistic and democratic implications. For over forty years, Göteborg Film Festival has worked to strengthen pluralism in the film sector by showcasing films and voices from around the world.
The streaming window is the fastest-growing avenue for consuming moving images. In light of the limited diversity of film offerings on the streaming market, it is crucial for Göteborg Film Festival to promote a stronger aesthetic and geographical diversity in this area through Draken Film. Today, Draken Film includes 1,000 films from 90 countries. Annually, 200,000 films are streamed from Draken Film's catalogue, with an equivalent number of streams provided to film festivals and other film screening organisations through the Draken Film platform.