Alicia Vikander is at this week’s Goteborg Film Festival to help promote the Alicia Vikander Film Lab high-school initiative, and because Scandinavia’s largest film festival, held in her home town of Göteborg, southern Sweden, has always been part of her life.

Established in 2021 by Vikander (“The Danish Girl”), the Festival and the Sten Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture, the three-year film training program is for local high-school-aged students, with the program made available to educational establishments in the Goteborg area since last January.

“We’ve managed to get it on the curriculum,” said Vikander who is the biggest star at this year’s festival and a fixture at the event, reciting an Honorary Nordic Dragon Award, for instance, in 2018. “It’s a project where I’ve been able to get a lot of it done remotely on Zoom,” she told Variety at Göteborg.

On Monday at the Festival, a gala will take place presenting films by this year’s students. 12 short films will be screened. The films are between two and five minutes long. Since the launch, film teachers from the Festival have been visiting schools selected this year, once a month, and Vikander has visited the schools twice during the school year.

The participating schools in 2022 are Kannebäcksskolan, Nordhemsskolan and Skälltorpsskolan – the school that Vikander attended. Each year, three to four new schools join the project.

“For a long time, I wanted to find a way to give back,” says Vikander who trained as a dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet School.

“My mum would never have had the possibility, for example, to pay for dance. If you get into the state Ballet, the state pays for you, and they also paid for my violin lessons. I played with the Philharmonic at 13. Then I did my first film in the Philharmonic. I got all these possibilities. Even if you don’t have financial support in Sweden you can get a cultural education.”

Another reason the initiative took flight is because she has a long-standing relationship with the Göteborg Festival.
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The actress also opened up about experiencing an “extreme and painful” miscarriage before the birth of her first son.

Alicia Vikander explained that while it may look like celebrities have it all, being at the top of your career and commanding international fame can actually be extremely isolating.

The actress said in an interview with The Sunday Times that she found stardom to be a double-edged sword as “there was juxtaposition” between how things looked and what was actually going on for her behind the scenes. “In other people’s eyes, [when] I was at my height of fame, I was the most sad. I kept telling myself, ‘Take it in. It is incredible.’ But I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “There were all these first-class flights, five-star rooms. But I was always by myself.”

She added that shooting films on location can also be a “very lonely” experience. Vikander recalled that, in 2014, when she was filming Seventh Son, her first movie away from her family, “If I didn’t have my friends to call, it would have been difficult. I’ve seen what can happen to people in my industry.” She added, “Sometimes you go through things that are tough in life and if you have an office job you can step away for a bit. But there are times that myself or colleagues have been through something and, well, I can’t understand how they went on to the red carpet afterwards. To be met by people asking, ‘How are you doing?’ Given what they had just been through? Most people would not be able to step out of their house.”

But that loneliness began to abate when Vikander met her husband Michael Fassbender. The pair first met in 2014 on the set of their film The Light Between Oceans, in which they played husband and wife. They would go on to get married for real in Ibiza, Spain at the La Granja farmstead resort in October 2017, and in 2021 they welcomed their son who is now 17 months old. They currently live in Lisbon, Portugal.
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Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s Beckett, starring John David Washington, Boyd Holbrook, Vicky Krieps and Alicia Vikander, will open the 74th edition of Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival on August 4. Produced by Luca Guadagnino, the film follows an American tourist vacationing in Greece who becomes the target of a manhunt after a devastating accident. The pic will screen at the iconic Piazza Grande before debuting on Netflix from August 13. “There’s a piece of Locarno in the success story of Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. From the Pardi di domani to the Piazza Grande. The Locarno Film Festival as an incubator for talent, a training ground and finally as a launch pad for the most exciting filmmakers of the future,” said Locarno Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro. “Beckett is a thriller that gives an original and contemporary reboot to the lessons learned from directors such as Sydney Pollack and Alan J. Pakula. An action film with a humanist dimension and intense civil engagement, here underpinned by a magisterial performance from John David Washington. Political commitment and great entertainment are the two main ingredients for a Piazza Grande that aims to surprise audiences and reassert the centrality of film in all its forms.” [Source]

Former ballerina Alicia Vikander has deemed the focus put on dancers’ bodies “unhealthy”.

The Oscar winner studied ballet before finding fame as an actress, and has spoken about her experiences in a new chat with Elle U.K. magazine.

“Being in a leotard looking at your body in a mirror seven hours a day, six days a week and having people talk about your body in front of you and in front of other girls and boys… Growing up with that is not healthy,” she said.

“I was very lucky to go through ballet school without having an eating disorder. I don’t know how,” Alicia explained, noting that it was her mother who spoke to her every day about the dangers of a negative body image.

However, when the Swedish star stopped dancing, she struggled to accept her changing body.

“But when I stopped ballet, I continued to eat a lot and – it’s stupid because I was really thin when I was dancing – but I gained two or three kilos and I freaked out when I saw a photo (of myself) because my body had changed,” the 31-year-old shared.

“Like so many other girls I was like, I shouldn’t eat carbs. That was the first thing I heard about, so I stopped eating bread.”

It was only after landing the role of Lara Croft in 2018’s Tomb Raider, where she was required to train from 4am daily and gained around 5kg of muscle, that The Danish Girl actress realised the importance of diet and exercise.

“I’ve often thought to myself, if I were to have a kid, would I put them in ballet school? I do really treasure a lot of my work ethic and things that I got from that education, but it either makes you or breaks you,” she mused. “And it could have as easily have gone the other way (for me).” [Source]

Stream un-released films to your home — for free!

Due to the cancellation of the South by Southwest film festival (SXSW) earlier this year, Amazon Prime Video and SXSW are teaming up to launch a digital film festival later this month.

This new, digital event is “Prime Video presents the SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection” and gives filmmakers an opportunity to submit their film for screening. The event is exclusive to Prime Video, but is free for all viewers — no Amazon Prime membership needed. The duo is looking to set the 10-day, one-time event for late April, although there isn’t a concrete date yet.

Participating filmmakers will earn a screening fee for Amazon’s right to show their movie to the world. SXSW has already shared details with filmmakers, who are now able to opt into the online event. Amazon and SXSW did not provide a list of agreed filmmakers.

Head of Amazon Studio, Jennifer Salke, had this to say about the partnership:

We’re honored to be able to provide a space for the SXSW filmmakers to share their hard work and passion with audiences for the first time. It’s been a privilege collaborating with Janet Pierson and the SXSW team to bring these diverse and inspiring films to viewers around the country. We are supporters of SXSW and other independent film festivals, and hope this online film festival can help give back some of that experience, and showcase artists and films that audiences might otherwise not have had the chance to see.

SXSW normally premieres a variety of films early in the year, showing off both upcoming feature films and documentaries. The SXSW 2020 lineup included screenings of David Lowery’s The Green Knight with Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, and Joel Edgerton, as well as Judd Apatow’s latest film starring Pete Davidson: The King of Staten Island. Some of SXSW 2019’s headliners included Booksmart, The Beach Bum, and Pet Sematary. [Source]