Göteborg International Film Festival is an annual film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden, launched in 1979. The first year the festival showed 17 films on 3 screens, and had 3 000 visitors. Today, the film festival is the biggest in Scandinavia and takes place 10 days every year between January and February. Around 450 films from 60 countries are screened for 115 000 visitors.[1] The film festival is also an important market place for the contractors in the movie industry.
The 2008 festival included a 51-title retrospective tribute to Ingmar Bergman.[2] The festival’s audience award was won by the film You, the Living, directed by Roy Andersson.[3]
The festival's main award is the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film, which can be won for feature film productions from the Nordic countries. The following films have received the award:[4]
| Year | Film | Director | Nationality of director (at time of film's release) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | David or Goliath | Anne Wivel | Norway |
| Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky | Michal Leszczylowski | Poland | |
| 1990 | A Handful of Time | Martin Asphaug | Norway |
| 1991 | Dolly and Her Lover | Matti Ijäs | Finland |
| 1992 | Freud's Leaving Home | Susanne Bier | Denmark |
| 1993 | Russian Pizza Blues | Michael Wikke and Steen Rasmussen | Denmark |
| 1994 | Spring of Joy | Richard Hobert | Sweden |
| 1995 | Cross My Heart and Hope to Die | Marius Holst | Norway |
| 1996 | The Atlantic | Kristian Petri, Jan Röed and Magnus Enquist | Sweden |
| 1997 | Body Troopers | Vibeke Idsøe | Norway |
| 1998 | Tic Tac | Daniel Alfredson | Sweden |
| 1999 | Yearning for a Life | Christer Engberg | Sweden |
| 2000 | My Mother Had Fourteen Children | Lars-Lennart Forsberg | Sweden |
| Knockout | Agneta Fagerström Olsson | Sweden | |
| 2001 | Cool and Crazy | Knut Erik Jensen | Norway |
| 2002 | The Bricklayer | Stefan Jarl | Sweden |
| 2003 | Noi the Albino | Dagur Kári | Iceland |
| 2004 | Med kameran som tröst, del 2 | Carl Johan De Geer | Sweden |
| 2005 | Frozen Land | Aku Louhimies | Finland |
| 2006 | Dark Horse | Dagur Kári | Iceland |
| 2007 | Darling | Johan Kling | Sweden |
| 2008 | Let the Right One In | Tomas Alfredson | Sweden |
| 2009 | The visitor | Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää | Finland |
| 2010 | R | Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer | Denmark |
| 2011 | She Monkeys | Lisa Aschan | Sweden |