Editor

When the 34th Göteborg International Film Festival now enters its last day new records have been set once again. More than 130 600 tickets have been sold to 750 screenings of 443 films from 76 countries. This year the number of visitors is 32 620, an increase of 1.4 percent from last year.

- The increase of the number of tickets sold may seem marginal, with 220 more tickets and 435 more festival passes. But given the extremely high occupancy, and the record years we have behind us, it feels great to be able to beat another record! says Åsa Bernlo, CEO of the festival.
 
All associated events and seminars included, the festival has attracted nearly 163 000 visits this year. The number of accreditations (journalists, industry representatives and guests) is at the same level as last year, around 1 800 people. The last two years, the Nordic Film Market has nearly doubled the number of buyers and festival representatives coming from all over the world to see new and upcoming Nordic films.

- For me it has been an outstanding final year! When we opened the doors to this festival, I knew we had a great program and eleven intense festival days to look forward to, but frankly I thought that it would be hard to beat the unprecedented number of visitors from 2010. Therefore it is particularly gratifying to see that both the audience and the industry like what we do and that they choose to watch films, talk about films and gather around films together with us. It bodes well for the festival in the future! says Åsa Bernlo.

On Saturday night, Göteborg International Film Festival held the Dragon Award gala, where Lisa Aschan's feature debut She Monkeys was awarded the Dragon Award Best Nordic Film (one million SEK).

- It was great having such an emotional ceremony yesterday. It seems that the increased prize money of our Nordic award has resulted in what we were hoping for: to provide more attention to Nordic films, says Marit Kapla, the festival's artistic director.

Among the most popular films during the festival were the opening film King of Devil's Island and the films in the programme's Gala section (e.g. Black Swan and The King's Speech). Other movies that filled the theaters were for example Certified Copy, Blue Valentine, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, King's Road, The First Beautiful Thing and El Medico - The Cubaton Story.

Next week a delegation from Göteborg International Film Festival will go to the film festival in Berlin. The work with the 35th festival begins.

Number of tickets sold: 130 620 (compared to 130 400 last year)

Number of visitors: 32 624 (compared to 32 189 last year)