Stockholm IFF Selects Oleg Sentsov as Honorary Chairman of the Jury

Stockholm IFF selects Oleg Sentsov as honorary chairman of the jury after it has previously announced that Ukraine is the country in the focus at the 2022 edition. Sentsov – who was the big winner at the last year’s Stockholm IFF edition – has put down the camera and took up arms to defend his country. The organisers declared that their decision was made in order to show support not only to the Ukrainian director but to all “filmmakers who are facing severe risk from carrying out their profession”.

“It’s not only about Ukranian culture, it’s also about our identity and how our nation will develop in the future. During the war we can’t await big cultural bursts, it will now mostly focus on documentaries and capturing realism. I’m hopeful and expect a Ukrainian cultural wave after the war where Ukranian culture will bloom and redefine its meaning.”

Oleg Sentsov, Producer & Photographer – Selection committee member.
Oleg Sentsov received the Sakharov Prize in 2018, but had to wait one more year to hold it.
“CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2019 – Source: EP”

Focus on Ukraine

Stockholm’s IFF 2022 program includes six Ukrainian films, digital interviews with Ukrainian filmmakers, a work in progress section and a panel discussion. Additionally a distribution fund was created for Swedish distributors to help them promote Ukrainian films.

Powerfull documentaries such as “A Rising Fury” (2022) by Ruslan Batytskyi & Lesya Kalynska, “Freedom on Fire” (2022) by Evgeny Afineevsky and “Mariupolis 2” (2022) by the late Mantas Kvedaravičius were included in this edition’s program.

Maryna’s Er Gorbachs multi-awarded “Klondike” (2022) movie will also be present among other famous Ukrainian directors’ works:

  • “The Kyiv Trial” (2022) by Sergey Loznitsa
  • “How Is Katia ?” (2022) by Christina Tynkevych
  • “Butterfly Vision” (2022) by Maksym Nakonechnyi

In order to create a platform for Ukrainian filmmakers to present their current projects to the Nordic Film industry, within the framework of Works in Progress, a collaboration with the Odesa International Film Festival has begun. The initiative will award 100.000 SEK (9.200 EUR) to a winning project.

This year’s focus on Ukraine was made possible by the support of Swedish Institute. 

The full announcement is available here.