Washington, Oct 9 (UNI) The Stockholm International Film Festival has unveiled its 2025 lineup, featuring a stellar selection of international films and a tribute to acclaimed talents Alexander Skarsgard and Benny Safdie.
Scheduled to run from November 5 to 16, the festival will showcase over a hundred films celebrating cinematic innovation and excellence.
Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgard, known for his roles in Big Little Lies and The Northman, will receive the Stockholm Achievement Award, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
Meanwhile, American filmmaker Benny Safdie, acclaimed for Uncut Gems and Good Time, will be honoured with the Visionary Award for his significant contributions to contemporary cinema.
Skarsgard’s latest film, Pillion, featuring him as a domineering biker opposite Harry Melling, and Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, will both be screened during the festival.
The festival opens with Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic, the final instalment in his Cairo trilogy starring Fares Fares, and concludes with Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love, featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.
Other highlights include Ronan Day-Lewis’s directorial debut, Anemone, starring his father Daniel Day-Lewis in a rare screen appearance, and Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, a biopic about Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart with Ethan Hawke in the lead, which premiered in Berlin.
This year’s Spotlight section, “Be Kind Rewind,” explores themes of nostalgia and memory with films such as Videoheaven, Ross McElwee’s Remake, and Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day, set in 1970s New York.
The festival will also pay tribute to the late David Lynch, who inaugurated Stockholm’s first edition in 1990, with screenings of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and a conversation with Blue Velvet star Isabella Rossellini.
Top Oscar contenders featured at the festival include Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, Kleber Mendonca Filho’s The Secret Agent, and Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl.
Germany is spotlighted as the Focus Country, presenting works by Christian Petzold, Mascha Schillinski, and emerging filmmakers Lauro Cress and Joscha Bongard. The documentary segment includes films by Werner Herzog, Laura Poitras, and Raoul Peck.
Music also plays a central role this year, with documentaries like It’s Never Over: Jeff Buckley and Swedish features such as Egghead Republic and Forastera, the latter featuring an original score by Anna von Hausswolff and Filip Leyman.
The 2025 Stockholm Film Festival promises a vibrant celebration of cinema, blending artistic tribute, cultural exploration, and the latest in global filmmaking.
