Welcome to this year’s festival!

Explore this year’s programme and buy your tickets

It’s with great joy we welcome you to the 5th edition of Umeå European Film Festival. During six days in dark November we cozy up together in the cinema to enjoy cinematic gems of many kinds. Because that’s just what the film festival is about, to experience other times, worlds and perspectives together.

A new feature in this year’s program is that we’ve opened up the section Northern Perspectives for admissions from all parts of northern Sweden. A selection of these films will compete for the festival award Storspoven, our annual price for the Best film which we chose together with Film i Västerbotten. During the past four years the award has gone to well-known names like Amanda Kernell and Milad Alami who have featured as winners with their short films. It will be very exciting to see which film the jury selects this year!

We are especially happy that the two-time Oscar nominee from Umeå Love Larson will visit the festival and talk about his impressive career as make-up artist in film and theatre.

Among the theatrical previews in our Red Carpet section we find performances from grand actors like Glenn Close and Bill Nighy together with new films from acclaimed directors like Malgorzata Szumowska and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. In our Panorama-section we have carefully selected a variety of up-to-date films from some of the world’s biggest international film festivals. Two examples are the Spanish relationship drama Dying and the unique artist biography Nico, 1988.

Besides all feature films we also present documentaries that gives us insights to different corners of life and the world. En armé av älskande depicts Swedish LGBTQ history and the Serbian documentary Occupied Cinema talks about activism, the history of a movie theatre and urban transformation.

In our extended selection of Special screenings you find films that push boundaries as well as cinematic classics that you have to experience at the theatre.

We are so excited to present this year’s selection to you. The program has many films which now will be possible to see where they truly belong: on the big screen and in our own town. Filmmakers will share with us their understandings of their works and visitors meet in spontaneous conversation between screenings. It’s finally time for film festival!

Kind regards,
Karin Johansson, Festival producer