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Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival launches its 48th edition this Friday, and for the first time in a decade, it will do so with a new Artistic Director.

Pia Lundberg, formerly Counsellor for Cultural Affairs at the Embassy of Sweden in London, replaced Jonas Holmberg as Artistic Director last March. Holmberg stepped down for a job at the Kalmar Art Museum in eastern Sweden. Before her stint in London, Lundberg was Head of International at the Swedish Film Institute from 2007 to 2018. Originally a journalist, she began her career as a writer and editor for various Swedish and international media outlets focusing on film and culture. She served as the editor-in-chief of the Swedish film magazine Cinema for four years.

Lundberg’s first edition opens with the debut screening of Norweigan filmmaker Eirik Svensson’s latest feature Safe House (Før mørket). Other highlights include visits from Thomas Vinterberg and Julie Delpy.

Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival will open with a world premiere screening of Norweigan filmmaker Eirik Svensson’s latest feature Safe House (Før mørket).

Set during the Central African Republic’s civil war in 2013, the film centers on a desperate Muslim man seeking refuge in a field hospital on Christmas Eve, while a threatening Christian militia gathers outside, demanding his life. At the heart of the events is Norwegian aid worker Linn, played by Kristine Kujath Thorp, who must make moral decisions to protect the man without endangering her colleagues.

The film will screen in satellite venues across Sweden at the same time as the Göteborg premiere. The film will also be available to watch through the festival’s digital platform.

Göteborg will this year also hand honorary awards to Thomas Vinterberg and Julie Delpy. The festival has said it is honoring Vinterberg for his deft talent for portraying “deeply...

Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival will open with a world premiere screening of Norweigan filmmaker Eirik Svensson’s latest feature Safe House (Før mørket).

Set during the Central African Republic’s civil war in 2013, the film centers on a desperate Muslim man seeking refuge in a field hospital on Christmas Eve, while a threatening Christian militia gathers outside, demanding his life. At the heart of the events is Norwegian aid worker Linn, played by Kristine Kujath Thorp, who must make moral decisions to protect the man without endangering her colleagues.

The film will screen in satellite venues across Sweden at the same time as the Göteborg premiere. The film will also be available to watch through the festival’s digital platform.

Göteborg will this year also hand honorary awards to Thomas Vinterberg and Julie Delpy. The festival has said it is honoring Vinterberg for his deft talent for portraying “deeply...

Charley Pride, the pioneering black country singer known for such hits as “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin'” and “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” has died in Dallas, Texas, from complications related to Covid-19, according to his publicist. He was 86.

Born in Sledge, Mississippi, in 1934, Pride picked cotton, played baseball in the Negro leagues, served in the U.S. Army, and worked in a smelting plant in Montana before moving to Nashville and becoming country music’s first black superstar. He scored 52 Top 10 country hits, including 29 Number Ones, and was the...

Between his high profile marriages to Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda, director Roger Vadim engaged in a notable liaison with Catherine Deneuve, just prior to her ascension to international stardom in 1964’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Having brought Bardot to fame with his most notable title, his 1956 debut And God Created Woman, their working relationship would continue across several more titles, even as he married another actress, Annette Stroyberg, who starred in his 1959 version of Dangerous Liaisons and the erotic vampire flick Blood & Roses. Between these flurry of romances, Vadim would return to black and white cinematography (which he seemed to prefer for evoking period) with 1963’s Vice and Virtue a loose adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s controversial erotic novel Justine for WWII era occupied France, resulting in his only collaboration with Deneuve as the virtuous member of a pair of beautiful sisters surviving on opposite ends of the oppressive Nazi spectrum.

The Birds And The Bees. Mother Nature Network columnist Vanessa Vadim, whose latest column focuses on eco-friendly sex. Mother Nature Network eco-columnist Vanessa Vadim typically doles out environmentally friendly advice on prosaic items such as cookware, mosquito repellants, and compost piles. In her latest installment, Vadim tackles the, um, ins-and-outs of sex toys and other sexual accoutrements. The daughter of the late French director Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman, Night Games) and actress Jane Fonda (sweaty workout videos, rebellious photo-ops), Vadim posits that, thanks to a complete lack of government regulation, sexual paraphernalia is fraught with nastiness—and that’s before you take off the wrapper. Antiquated laws require that sex toys be labeled as novelties or as gags, not as something that stimulates or enhances the sexual experience. Thus, with no regulation, there is absolutely no product testing and no label warnings. Among the biggest hazards to your health: phthalates,...