The Göteborg Film Festival is the largest event of its kind in the Nordic region, as well as the leading film festival in Scandinavia. Every year, the festival attracts big names – like actors Mads Mikkelsen and Alicia Vikander – as well as huge crowds of guests and participants.
This year, a few visitors will also be able to use the festival to challenge their deepest fears by watching a film trapped alone in a sarcophagus and isolated from the outside world. It’s the definition of a unique movie experience, and almost certainly the world’s most claustrophobic cinema.
This year, the festival will focus on the concept of the apocalypse: and as part of this, it will host the Nordic premiere of the hotly-tipped sci-fi adaption Aniara in a crowded cinema. In Aniara, humanity is forced to escape from the Earth via spaceship. The vessel’s passengers are forced to wrestle with obsessions, isolation and limited space. This is an experience that the Gothenburg Film Festival will now let selected visitors come very close to.
“This is going to be a challenging experience that intensifies the sensation of being alone in deep space – something that characterises Aniara. We wanted to explore what happens when you see a movie in these kinds of extreme conditions. The screenings might even raise a couple of questions about the direction in which humankind is headed,” says Jonas Holmberg, creative director of the Göteborg Film Festival.
For the strictly limited sarcophagus screenings, the film will be shown through screens that are embedded in the chamber’s covers and equipped with speakers. The sarcophagi are constantly monitored: if an occupant wants to get out before the movie is over a “panic button” immediately halts the proceedings. The whole screening takes around 3 hours. The screenings for the public will take place between 27th and 31st January, 2019.
In order to get the opportunity to experience Aniara in extremely close quarters, to register interest and read more: https://goteborgfilmfestival.se/en/claustrophobic-cinema
