The Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF), is Sweden's biggest film event, and in this, its 35th year, it showed an impressive 729 films from 80 countries and attracted over 200 000 participants.
At the closing Award Galla on Saturday, 4 February, the jury explained how this year’s Dragon ”goes to a film that tells the story of a family that suffers – and is finally destroyed by – the brutality of its father. The films protagonist, the son, learns throughout the film to disobey and to mistrust his father – something that is terribly hard to learn and understand for a child: that your parent is selfishly using his power over you to break your will. We were deeply touched (...).” The award includes a 1 million SEK cash prize (aprox. 113 000 EUR), making it highly esteemed.
Company Orheim is based on a novel by author Tore Renberg, and tells the story of Jarle Klepp, a young boy growing up the town Stavanger on the western coast of Norway in the 1980s. Jarle’s teenage years have previously been depicted in the 2008 film ’The man that loved Yngve’.
Also in the running for Best Nordic Film was Jens Lien’s ‘Sons of Norway’ (Sønner av Norge), which ended up picking up the FIPRESCI Award. This prize is awarded by The International Federation of Film Critics, who called ’Sons of Norway’: "a funny, moving and creative coming-of-age tale that makes outstanding use of music for emotional and period detail. All the members of the jury were impressed by the maturity of the film as well as its daring experimental treatment of some of its oneiric scenes."