20th Stockholm Festival breaks record

The Stockholm International Film Festival attracted its biggest audience ever with 130 000 visits in all of 2009. This year the festival celebrated its 20th anniversary with screenings on ice in the presence of Susan Sarandon, an enormously successful Face2Face with Precious-director Lee Daniels, an inspired Luc Besson and a spotlight centered on the apocalypse.

This year the festival can boast with sold-out screenings, exciting seminars like Future on Demand and Wanted! Female Directors, screenings on ice and films from the festival program screened On Demand for the entire country to see. The newly established distribution prize Telia Film Award was given to Miss Kicki by Håkon Liu, a film that was also sold out during the festival and still lacks Scandinavian distribution.
The ten films with the biggest audiences during the festival was: Up in the Air, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Precious, The Limits of Control, The Road, Metropia, Tetro, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, The Girlfriend Experience and the animated feature 9. Over 180 films from 53 countries were shown during 12 days. On top of that the audience got to meet 101 filmmakers and actors Face2Face at the theaters.
The Silver Audience Award went to The Cove by Louie Psihoyos, which shows the audience's great interest in this year's environmentally themed spotlight.
- This year's festival really lived up to our expectations. More visiting directors than ever made it possible for the audience to meet with filmmakers from all over the world. We managed to bring quality film to a broader audience and our apocalyptic theme became a great success. The debate spread even outside the festival and just as we had hoped more young people got involved, says festival director Git Scheynius.