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Maria Sødahl’s The Last Resort has clinched the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the 2026 Göteborg Film Festival, which encompasses a prize sum of SEK 400,000, or over $40,000.
The jury — comprising head Joshua Oppenheimer (director, U.S./Denmark) and members Fabrice Aragno (cinematographer/director, Switzerland), Lia Boysen (actor, Sweden), Sanna Lenken (director/screenwriter, Sweden) and Gergely Pálos (cinematographer, Hungary) — stated their reasoning: “Today, as our world tips toward fascism and the power-hungry use storytelling to divide humanity into us and them — those worthy of our compassion and those not — cruelty toward the outsider is repeated until we come to see it as normal, then, to our shame, as legitimate — and finally we stop seeing it at all.”
“One film dared to examine, with unblinking honesty, this most important moral and political problem of our times, and to show how the callousness bred by habitual cruelty diminishes us all, hollowing out our relationships — even with our partners and children,” the statement continued. “With pitch-perfect performances, a razor-sharp yet nuanced script, and not a trace of sentimentality, the film is a mirror in which we see ourselves with devastating clarity: If we refuse to confront our own complicity in the cruelty unfolding around us right now, the love we claim to live by cannot save us — because the compassion that underpins it is conditional.”
Producers Thomas Robsahm, Sigurd Mikal Karoliussen and Helena Danielsson shared the prize alongside Sødahl and actor Esben Smed.
Running from Jan. 23 to Feb. 1, the fest’s program lineup featured 266 films from 76 countries, including Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut The Chronology of Water, Chloé Zhao’s Golden Globe-winning Hamnet and Sophy Romvari’s Locarno favorite Blue Heron.
Below are the additional Göteborg winners:
Dragon Award for Best Acting
Adam Lundgren, The Quiet Beekeeper
Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award
Louise McLaughlin, Weightless
FIPRESCI Award
Weightless (directed by Emilie Thalund)
Audience Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film
The Quiet Beekeeper (directed by Marcus Carlsson)
Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary
Malandro Moon (directed by Iván Blanco)
The Ingmar Bergman Debut Award
Bouchra (directed by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki)
Dragon Award for Best International Film
Calle Malaga (directed by Maryam Touzani)
Youth Jury Dragon Award
My Father’s Shadow (directed by Akinola Davies Jr.)
Draken Film Award
Uncle Ali and I (directed by Shahab Mehrabi)
Honorary Dragon Award
Agnieszka Holland
Nordic Honorary Dragon Award
Noomi Rapace
Startsladden — Best Swedish Short
All That Remains of Me (directed by Christer Wahlberg)
Startsladden Cinematography Award
Christine Leuhusen, Without Kelly
Startsladden — Audience Award
All That Remains of Me
The Church of Sweden Angelos Film Award
The Patron (directed by Julia Thelin)
The Nordic Series Script Award
Ingeborg Topsøe, Secrets We Keep
Creative Courage Award
Blood Cruise (produced by Alexander Rönnberg from Northern Fableand and Will Tennant from Imaginarium Productions, commissioned by Johanna Gårdare and Sonja Nilsson Hermele from SVT)
Nordic Film Market Awards
Out of Athens (directed by Badrudin Ga’ur)
Chentian (directed by Suha Arraf)
Mai Zetterling Grant (presented by Swedish Arts Grants Committee)
Peter Larsson, animator/filmmaker
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