05/10/2012 - Swedish director Karzan Kader’s feature debut, Bekas, will have its world premiere at the Stockholm International Film Festival, which runs between November 7-18

Power within politics, arts and relationships from Russia to the US and back to Korea, with challenging and uncomfortable questions, will be the theme of the Spotligt sidebar at this year's Stockholm International Film Festival , which unspools its 23rd edition between November 7-18. Festival director Git Scheynius will announce the full programme on October 17.

The 12-film line-up includes US director Robert Redford's The Company You Keep, where he himself stars as an anti-war activist pursued by a journalist (Shia LeBeouf), and Russian director Andrey Gryazev's Tomorrow, about the actions of the Vojna resistance movement (which gave birth to Pussy Riot). German director Marc Wiese's Camp 14: Total Control Zone follows a political prisoner in North Korea who manages to escape to the strange world of the South.

Swedish director Karzan Kader's feature debut, Bekas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Karzan Kader
film profile] (photo), which Denmark's TrustNordisk sold to 13 territories after screening a promo in Cannes, will have its world premiere in competition for the festival circuit's heaviest prize, the Bronze Horse (7.3 kilos). It is based on Kader's 29-minute graduation film from Sweden's Dramatiska Institutet and was selected for Stockholm, later to win the Silver Student Oscar.

Produced by Sandra Harms, of Sonet Film AB, Bekas was shot in Iraqi Kurdistan, starting during the Arab spring: "My toughest job so far," Harms recalled. It is the story of two homeless Kurdish boys who have watched Superman in the local cinema, then decides to run away to the USA to meet him.

The festival will be opened by Swedish director Mikael Marcimain's Call Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which won the international critics’ FIPRESCI award in Toronto. Also confirmed for the programme are US directors Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild and Ava DuVernay's The Middle of Nowhere, Brazilian director Cao Hamburger's Xingu, and Yugoslavian director Srdjan Dragojevic's The Parade [+see also:
trailer
film profile].