Swedish nurse wins week in isolation, films amid pandemic



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GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) – Cinema in lockdown: Scandinavia’s largest film festival explores social isolation resulting from COVID-19 by setting up a cinema for a temporary on a desolate North Sea island with the only companion of the events entire movie selection and enough food to last the week.

Lisa Enroth was selected from among 12,000 volunteers to spend a week on Hamneskar Island at Pater Noster, a former lighthouse turned boutique hotel. Film-loving Swedish emergency room nurse Lisa said the isolation would give her “time to think and be alone” after a busy year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year’s Goteborg Film Festival, which runs from January 29 to February 29. 8, is certainly unique. “The Isolated Cinema” is only accessible by small boat and is located on the edge of an archipelago in one of the most arid and windswept places in western Sweden.

Enroth, who left for the island on Saturday, watches the films online either in her bedroom or in a living room, or she can watch them from the top of the lighthouse itself where the organizers have set up a small screen surrounded by a view. impregnable.

44th Gothenburg Film Festival artistic director Jonas Holmberg hopes this extreme viewing experience can help reflect on what the pandemic has done to our relationship with cinema.

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“During this pandemic, so many people have turned to the cinema when they are in isolation,” he said. “But the pandemic has also changed the way we experience films.”

Like most events, the film festival went live as COVID-19 restrictions banned public gatherings, but organizers have set up a real-time streaming platform accessible to people living in Sweden in the goal of reproducing, albeit virtually, the collective viewing of the cinema experience.

At the Draken Cinema, the traditional seat of the film festival, only one ticket is available for each screening, but filmmakers, actors or producers may also appear to be talking about their work.

The opening gala saw the Swedish premiere of Tove, the 2020 biographical film by Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson, creator of the Moonins series. Walking down an empty red carpet, the film’s director and lead actress dressed the role, and the organizers sought to replicate the excitement of a premiere to the viewer alone in the hall. But buzz has also been found online, with people posting photos in disguise for the premiere and drinking champagne.

“We want to encourage that and make it as much of a social experience as possible,” Holmberg said.

For the real-world cinematic experience, a lottery determines who gets a ticket and on Saturday it was Sandra Fogel’s turn to sit alone.

Of the 700 seats to choose from, she sat off-center a few rows to the side.

“It’s a little sad,” she said, “because you don’t know what will happen when the pandemic is over. What will happen with the cinemas? “

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