(Stockholm) The Swedish director Ruben Östlund, double winner of the Palme d’Or, announced on Wednesday that he was going to conduct an experiment to make the public considered “passive” react more to the cinema, by turning into a room heater.
Faced with a Swedish audience reputed to be not very expansive, the new master of Scandinavian cinema will play this improbable role at the end of January at the next festival in Gothenburg, in the south-west of Sweden.
In order to carry out his project, the satirical and provocative director will “direct” the public during a screening of his latest film, Without Filterthe director’s second Palme d’Or after The Square in 2017, he announced in a press release.
During a special session on January 28, Ruben Östlund will play on the relationship between the screen and the spectators, challenging the latter to interact with the film.
According to the organizers, spectators will fill out a form before the screening to give the director information about their profile.
He will then direct them by asking them to do specific things during the session.
“Compared to other countries like France or the United States, the Nordic countries have a culturally more passive audience,” said the 48-year-old director in a press release.
“Here we hide in our armchair, we take less responsibility during the screening”, he explained, adding that “we go home after the session without discussing what we have seen” .
“This way of going to the cinema is almost not worth leaving your personal screen,” laments the filmmaker.
Enjoyable satire of the super-rich and luxury, the entertaining Without Filter had convinced the jury of the Cannes Film Festival, bringing Östlund into the very closed circle of webbed doubles, including the Belgian Dardenne brothers and the Briton Ken Loach.