11-22 November are the dates for the 37th edition of the Stockholm International Film Festival, offering 130 films from around 60 territories and promising “a wide variety that still forms a unified picture of the 2026 year in film”, according to Beatrice Karlsson, the ever-active programme director of the festival. “Still, it wasn’t that hard to put the programme together this year. I feel a generous dose of innovative expressions coming to the fore right now, with some very exciting examples on show, not least in our main competition this year.”

Karlsson and her able team have been scouring the major festivals, including Cannes and Venice, with a fine-tooth comb, handpicking titles from IFFR, Sundance, Telluride and Toronto. Eleven Oscar submissions are being screened, and Japan has been chosen as special focus country. Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything (USA) will open and close the festival, respectively. This year’s 18 competing films include several first features, among them Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva, Eivind Landsvik’s Low Expectations and Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid (USA), a movie that’s also represented in this year’s spotlight section, named “Daddy Issues”.

“We found a number of films dealing with fathers,” says Karlsson. “There’s the classical father at times, the patriarch breadwinner who looks after the family, but more often, it’s some problematic subspecies, or at worst an absent one. Or a ruthless one, like in Russian helmer Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. Zvyagintsev is also represented in another little group of directors this year: the filmmaker in exile. We are also showing movies by several Iranians forced to live abroad right now, like Pegah Ahangarani and Mohsen Gharaei.” The former’s Cannes-rewarded Rehearsal for a Revolution participates in the documentary competition, and the latter’s Falling House is entered in the Open Zone section.

A comparatively low-key Nordic contingent does include a treat in the form of a brand-new makeover of the Wallander crime series with Gustaf Skarsgård donning the guise of the stalwart Swedish cop. Molly Hartleb’s Wallander – One Step Behind will have its world premiere at the festival. The same goes for a brand-new concert film recapturing a bona fide Swedish musical wonder: Roxette – Live in Sydney, originally shot in 1991, will have band leader Per Gessle attending and presenting the screening. 

Special honourable awards will also be presented. The USA’s John Turturro will receive the Stockholm Achievement Award, and Sweden’s own Lena Olin will get the Lifetime Achievement Award, both for distinguished acting careers; they will also present master classes. The industry platform, Industry Days, will play out from 16-19 November, with its full programme set to be unveiled next week. Among the programme items already mentioned is a case study on the production of this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Fjord, presented by Dyveke Bjørkly Graver and Andrea Berentsen Ottmar, of Norwegian production company Eye Eye Pictures, together with Romanian producer Tudor Reu, of Cristian Mungiu’s Mobra Films.

The full programme can be perused here.