Bringing the digital era into film festivals is something we love at filmfestivals.com and strive to achieve every day. We are passionate advocates of the usage of the internet as the primary communication means for festival audiences, in sync or not with live events in "real life " festivals.
We have been pioneers (back in 2000) building and programming the first VOD platform of festival films in the hope that audiences (scattered worldwide, diasporas, serious film fans...) would be eagerly looking for quality content from festivals.
2000 was too early; we have temporarily put this activity on a hiatus for a few years and plan to bring it back early 2010.
But the audience is there now, rights holders are more mature and open to experimenting and monetizing, and, last, technology has given us the means to speed the process and add quality to the film online experience.
We would like to salute festivals like Stockholm which, along with a handful of other festivals, has developed such an initiative.

The Stockholm International Film Festival (18–29 November 20) will organise a Festival on demand : "Our goal is to reach as many people as possible and to encourage distribution of quality film in Sweden. "Festival on Demand" is a step in the right direction, says Git Scheynius, Festival director".

During this years festival ten chosen festival films will have their Nordic premiere on Telia digital TV before being shown in the cinema. The project "Festival on Demand - a festival for all Swedes" will give film lovers from all over Sweden a chance to see quality film starting on the first day of the festival. The festival quite simply moves in to the living room.
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- Thanks to new technology, today people expect being able to watch film and TV whenever they want. We want to break new grounds for our customers and parts of Stockholm Film Festival's program will now be available for our 350 000 TV customers in line with this new trend, says Stefan Trampus, Head of Bredband services at Telia.
The Stockholm Film Festival has for many years been trying to get quality film a wider audience. In 2006 the festival was the first festival to introduce festival films on VoD (Video on Demand) after the festival. In 2008 they simultaneously premiered one film on cinema and on VoD together with Telia. This year ten films have been chosen to premiere exclusively on digital TV starting already on the first day of the festival. One of the films having it's Nordic premiere on Telia digital TV is the Swedish film "Miss Kicki" by debutant director Håkan Liu with Pernilla August in a leading role.
The Telia Film Award
The ten films, today without Swedish distribution, will compete for the newly founded prize - The Telia Film Award. The prize is a co-operation with Telia has a prize sum of 100 000 SEK (approx 9 500 euros). It's part of "Festival on Demand" and created to encourage distribution of quality film in Sweden.
The prize money is to be obtained by the Swedish distribution company that acquires the winning title for distribution in the Swedish market within nine months of the festival. The prize money must be used to market the film in Sweden. If the winning film is not picked up by a Swedish distributor within the stated period, the prize money will be shared 50/50 between the director(s) and producer(s) of the film.

The Stockholm Film Festival will with the help of BTI provide translation and subtitling free of charge for each film participating in the competition enabling seamless introduction to the Swedish audience. Both Stockholm Film Festival and Telia will provide extensive marketing for the films through their respective organizations.
The winner is selected by the viewers and a jury consisting of film journalist Hans Wiklund, actress Moa Gammel and theatre director Petra Revenue. Voting instructions can be found on
www.stockholmfilmfestival.se/telia
Films nominated:
Amreeka by Cherien Dabis
Beewax by Andrew Bujalski
City Island by Raymond De Felitta
Go get som Rosemary by Joshua Safdie and Benny Safdie
Happy End by Arnaud Larrieu och Jean-Marie Larrieu
Hipsters by Valery Todorovsky
Humpday by Lynn Shelton
Miss Kicki by Håkon Liu
The Missing Person by Noah Buschel
Shifty by Eran Creevy
www.stockholmfilmfestival.se