This year’s focus: Forever Young
We live in a time where youth has become an ideal that permeates everything from culture and politics to technology and lifestyle. The boundaries between generations and phases of life are becoming blurred, and the notion of being young has become something we are expected to strive for, no matter how old we actually are. Forever Young is therefore contemporary and existential in nature, due to the fact that it affects how we perceive identity, aging, life’s many phases and what it means to live a meaningful life in a time where nobody wants to be “the adult in the room”.
Cinema has always been obsessed by youth, but also by aging, transformation, and our fight against the passage of time. Forever Young invites thoughts and dialogue about how the art of film has depicted generations, the body, beauty, death, memory and our passion for life, in everything from coming-of-age movies and stories of youthful rebellion to narratives about loneliness, nostalgia and the fear of growing old. The history of cinema is full of characters who refuse to grow up, people who try to start over, and a society that worships the young while marginalizing the older.
In today’s culture, there is a strong interest in questions about longevity, self-optimization and identity. Tech, medicine and AI are turning our ideas about defying the aging process and stretching human limits into reality. At the same time, a cultural shift is underway, in which generations lead increasingly similar lives, adulthood starts to lose its definition, and nostalgia exists alongside constant pursuit of newness. Forever Young also contains a reflection about cinema itself: a still-young art form that continually reinvents itself and attracts new generations.
What does it actually mean to be young? Who is allowed to be young? What happens to us when aging and death become something that we can try to optimize away – or avoid entirely? What kind of lives will we live when we have outlived ourselves? This theme aims to give audiences new perspectives on youth, aging, generational boundaries, life choices, self-image, and our contemporary obsession with eternal vitality.
Being young has never been more desirable, or less clear. In an era where 50 is the new 30, and growing old is something that can be halted, hidden or hacked, the boundaries between different phases of life are becoming blurred. What happens when we can no longer become old? And what is lost when more and more people try so hard to stay young?
Through film screenings, discussions and meetings we will explore youth as an ideal, an identity and an illusion. For 50 years the festival has followed generations through their lives. This year, we turn our focus towards the new realities of aging, and the dream of remaining forever young.
Pia Lundberg, Artistic Director
Three films included in Focus: Forever Young
The Revolution Against Death
Joshua Oppenheimer examines the dream of eternal life in a filmic poem about mortality, fear, longing and existential dread.
The End of It
A star-studded sci-fi satire in which immortality has become boring, and a 250-year-old artist finds new inspiration in the idea of the end of it all.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Legendary Harlem Renaissance figures deliver eternally-young perspectives at a cocktail party in Duke Ellington's townhouse, 50 years after the movement's heyday.