The 43rd Gothenburg Film Festival, the largest film festival in Scandinavia, started in Sweden on Friday. The Belarusian film about teenagers – Vlada Senkova’s “II” (“Two”) was selected for the panorama “Five Continents”. Together with this film, the program presents the winners of the 26th Listapad: “The Criminal Man” by Dmitry Mamulia, “Lillian” by Andreas Horvath and “The Father” by Kristina Grozeva. The Swedish premiere of the Belarusian film will take place on January 30.
The 43rd Gothenburg Film Festival runs from January 24 to February 3 and will feature 357 films from 89 countries. About 160,000 viewers attend the festival’s screenings each year. This year, the festival is the first film festival to achieve gender balance. For the first time in its program, half of the selected films were made by women.
The main program includes four feature film competitions: the Scandinavian Competition, the International Competition, the Scandinavian Documentary Competition, and the Ingmar Bergman Debut Competition. The winner of the Grand Prix of the festival will be awarded the “Red Dragon”. Every year, the festival also awards an honorary “Dragon” – an award for contribution to cinema. This year, it will be given to Stellan Skarsgard, who won a Golden Globe for his role in the TV series “Chernobyl”.
“For us, participation in the Gothenburg Film Festival is a great honor, because it can be called the main film forum in Scandinavia and one of the largest in the world. It is very interesting how Swedish public will react to our film. And we are very happy that the international fate of the film continues, the participation in other prestigious international film festivals is coming ahead for it,” says Nikolai Lavrenyuk, producer of the film “II”.
Vlada Senkova’s unprecedented film can still be seen in cinemas in Belarus. From January 30 to February 12, “II” will be shown in Oktyabr’ cinema (Borisov), Rodina cinema (Molodechno), Zorka Venera cinema (Soligorsk).
The film “II” tells the story of 16-year-old Nastya, Sasha and Kristina, who study together in the tenth grade and live an ordinary life of teenagers: lessons, tutors, going to the cinema, parties. At school, there is a strict discipline and it is difficult to be different from everyone else. But one day this small world will be shaken by news that will bring out all the fears and prejudices.
The world premiere of the youth drama was held at the Warsaw International Film Festival, where the film received a Special mention from the jury. The Belarusian premiere was held as part of the 26th Listapad MIFF, and the film was released in December 2019. In January, the film entered the program of the Bridges Film Festival (Brussels, Belgium). In the Belarusian media, the film is called “the most scandalous Belarusian film” (CityDog.by), “film, which should be shown in all schools in the country” (KYKY.ORG), “film “II” is a test of how we respond to someone else’s pain and injustice” (Gazetaby).
The movie “II” was created by the ART Corporation Center in cooperation with the UNESCO IITE. Look for publications dedicated to the film using the hashtag #ТолькоПапеНеГовори, as well as on the official pages of “II”(on the website of «ART Corporation» and in social networks @iifilm2019).