Umeå Filmfestival 2026: Work / Resistance

It was in 2005 that I first saw a film at Folkets Bio. I was 18 years old and at Kronan in Luleå, where Folkets Bio Luleå was based for many years. What began as an enthusiastic young visitor soon turned into a place on the association’s board, and before I knew it, I was up in the projection room with Birger, getting a lesson in how the 35mm projector worked. A few years later, while living in Stockholm, I took the exam to become a cinema projectionist. I went on to spend a few years working at various cinemas south of the city, in the warm and noisy world of the projection room, before digitalisation became a reality.

Cinema projectionists are a proud profession. They like to organise, fight for better working conditions and constantly strive to improve their working environment. At a larger cinema, the working day could involve hours of running back and forth between the projection rooms, the entrance and the auditoriums. Every Thursday, films had to be moved between screens and new trailers added to the programme. Sometimes the work went on late into the night before everything was in place. And the worst task of all was being the one who had to rewind the films leaving the programme after their final screenings, ready to be sent on to other cinemas across Sweden.

Digitalisation has, of course, changed the profession. It has become easier to run film festivals, programme films and get them to cinemas outside the major cities more quickly and efficiently.

The professional pride is something I admire. So is everything that could happen unexpectedly: when a reel accidentally ended up upside down in the middle of a film, when a print arrived with defects that forced you to choose between having sharp subtitles or sharp images of the actors, or when the soundtrack had been scratched.

This year’s edition of Umeå Film Festival has the theme Work / Resistance, bringing together new films and older classics that explore work, power and resistance in different ways. It is telling that some of the earliest films in cinema history, including the Lumière brothers’ Workers Leaving the Factory from 1895, depict workers on their way home at the end of the working day. Since the early days of cinema, film has documented and portrayed different social classes, working conditions and injustices. This is particularly true of many of the films distributed and screened by Folkets Bio throughout its more than 50 years as part of Swedish film culture. Film has an inherent ability to tell stories about other people’s struggles, sorrows and lives, allowing us to see the world from new perspectives.

During the 21st century, working life has changed at a rapid pace, perhaps so quickly that we haven’t had time to fully take in everything that’s happening. Many of us are probably growing tired of all the alarming headlines about AI, but there’s no ignoring how technology is changing the conditions of work. Tasks that once required hours of human labour have been automated, transforming industries and replacing people in an increasing number of positions. What happens to work, and to humanity, when technological development moves faster than our ability to come to terms with it?

In the classics The Baby Carriage, Norrtullsligan, Eat Sleep Die and Ådalen 31, we encounter working life in Sweden’s welfare state and the conflicts that emerged around factories, working conditions and the right to organise.

In Anywhere Anytime, we find ourselves in Turin, following a young undocumented man from Senegal who starts working as a bicycle courier. When his bike is stolen on his very first day on the job, a desperate search through the city begins. The precarious conditions of the gig economy become clear: when making a living depends on being constantly available for work, a single setback can have serious consequences.

The films move between different eras and working lives, but return to the same questions: Who controls our work? Who gets to share in the value it creates? And what room is there for resistance when the conditions keep changing?

Welcome to the 13th edition of Umeå Film Festival! Over six days, we will screen around 100 films at venues across Umeå. This year, we are also turning our attention to analogue formats. On Saturday, we dedicate a day to analogue film, with talks and screenings on 16mm and 8mm.

See you around the festival!

/Mia Rogersdotter Gran
Festival Producer & Artistic Director