Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience (top); 9 by Shane Acker (middle); Mads Mikkelsen, Anna Mouglalis in Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (bottom)
The 2009 edition Stockholm International Film Festival attracted the two-decade-old festival's biggest audience ever: 130,000 moviegoers.
The Stockholm festival's 20th anniversary was celebrated with screenings on ice, and the presence of international celebrities such as Lifetime Achievement Award winner Susan Sarandon, Luc Besson, and Precious director Lee Daniels.
The ten films that drew the largest crowds during the festival were mostly American-made fare: Up in the Air, starring George Clooney; Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, featuring George Clooney's voice; Lee Daniels' Precious, which earned Mo'Nique the festival's best actress award; Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control; John Hillcoat's The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen; Tarik Saleh's sci-fi thriller Metropia, with Vincent Gallo and Juliette Lewis; Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro, with Gallo and Maribel Verdú; Jan Kounen's Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, with Danish star Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis; Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, with Sasha Grey; and Shane Acker's animated feature 9, which turned out to be a box-office disappointment in the United States.
Over 180 films from 53 countries were shown during the 12-day festival, and 101 filmmakers and performers took part in the event.
Also, the newly established "distribution prize," the Telia Film Award, was given to Håkon Liu's Miss Kicki, a film that, ironically, still lacks Scandinavian distribution even though its screening was sold out at the festival.
I was told that Drew Barrymore's Whip It sold out at the festival.