Sweden’s Gothenburg Film Festival, the Nordic countries’ largest film and television event, is introducing a lie detector test to point out the truth, a central discussion point of the 2026 event.
The festival announced on Monday that members of the public will be subjected to polygraph tests by real-life expert Orjan Hesjedal in an interrogation room built for the event.
“High-pressure scenarios inspired by investigative environments, complete with cameras, lights, and physiological monitoring” are optional, but could prove very popular.
It’s also similar to other live-event simulations that focus on high-human-risk issues that are oddly current. Most memorably, in 2021, when the pandemic was still raging in parts of the world, Swedish emergency nurse Lisa Enrot was chosen from thousands of applicants to spend seven days at Pater Noster Lighthouse, a luxury boutique hotel now located on the isolated island of Hamneskár off the coast of western Sweden. Although she didn’t have a computer or a cell phone, she was able to binge-watch 60 films from the Gothenburg Festival program.
This initiative reflects social distancing and the fact that movie and TV consumption increasingly becomes the only experience. The lie detector test begins as the festival asks what it calls “a simple but fundamental question: What is the value of truth today?”
Starting from real life, a cynic would say that truth is rewarded in trials. Audience members who tell the truth and are found to have told the truth will be given a truth ticket, which will grant them access to festival screenings.
“In our time, truth has become strangely negotiable. By turning truth into currency, we assign it a concrete value that is rarely emphasized. We want to create an experiment in which lies have consequences,” said Gothenburg Artistic Director Pia Lundberg. “By turning truth into something monetizable and usable, the festival assigns truth a tangible value rarely acknowledged in the real world. In an era when personal narratives often overshadow factual truth, Truth Ticket reframes honesty as something of substance, consequence, and value,” the festival added on Monday.
In another stunt, the festival on Monday released a black comedy clip on YouTube in which Alexander Karim (The Swarm) plays a lollipop-licking interrogator who ponders the measure of truth in a dingy torturer’s basement. As his assistant, fellow Swedish star David Dencik (Pressure Point) personally demonstrates two slightly crazy and over-prepared torture techniques.
As another part of its focus on truth, the Gothenburg Festival will screen a showcase of films that explore this issue. These include Kauser Ben Hania’s notable docudrama “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which was shortlisted for an Oscar. “No Comment” is a political spin satire by Norway’s Petter Ness. Kirill Serebrennikov’s Cannes premiere title “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,” and Jim Sheridan and David Merriman’s “Re-Creation,” which was praised by Variety as a “brilliant” jury room drama that revived the spirit of Sidney Lumet’s 1957 classic “Twelve Angry Men.”
The 49th Gothenburg Film Festival will be held from January 23rd to February 1st.
Gothenburg Film Festival The Truth Ticket (LR) David Dencik, Alexander Karim (as the two interrogators)
Provided by Gothenburg Film Festival
