Favorite becomes the most seen film

By Xuefei Chen Axelsson

The 29th edition of Stockholm International Film Festival is now over. During the festival’s 12 days, 159 films from over 60 countries have been screened, more than 130 screenings have been sold out, and 120 directors and filmmakers have visited the festival. The most seen film during the festival was The Favourite by Yorgos Lanthimos.

Rachel Weisz in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite.

The 29th edition of Stockholm International Film Festival closed 2018-11-18. Among 10 best seen films, I have seen 7 of them. It is a surprise to me why Cold War was not in the list.  Actually Cold War is also a good film.

Favorite was indeed a good film. Even though it was in 17th century, it was very colorful while Cold War turned out to be black and white. Maybe that was the difference. But the actor and actress were very good. 159 films from over 60 countries have been screened in six movie theaters across Stockholm. The Favourite by the two-time Bronze Horse-winning director Yorgos Lanthimos was the festival’s most seen film. Over 1500 people saw the dark comedy, which was this year’s closing film at Stockholm International Film Festival.

This year’s festival made record numbers, both in terms of the number of sold out screenings and the number of visiting directors and filmmakers. One third of all screenings were sold out, and 120 filmmakers visited Stockholm for this year’s festival. Over 50 of these filmmakers met the public in exclusive Face2Face conversations in conjunction with the screenings of their films. One of them was the two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi, who was presented with this year’s Stockholm Visionary Award.

— It is an honor to receive the Visionary Award, especially because it provided me with the opportunity to be in Stockholm and to meet and converse with students and cinephiles alike. My best wishes for Stockholm International Film Festival, says Asghar Farhadi about this year’s festival.

Farhadi’s film Everybody Knows is one of the most seen films during this year’s festival.

Below are the festival’s ten most seen films:

  1. The Favourite by Yorgos Lanthimos
  2. Everybody Knows by Asghar Farhadi
  3. X&Y by Anna Odell
  4. Beautiful Boy by Felix van Groeningen
  5. Cold War by Pawel Pawlikowski
  6. Wildlife by Paul Dano
  7. Jesus by Hiroshi Okuyama
  8. Capernaum by Nadine Labaki
  9. Vox Lux by Brady Corbet
  10. Suspiria by Luca Guadagnino

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