Forever Young in Focus as Goteborg Film Festival Celebrates 50 Years

Nov. 10, 2026

In a time when youth is the ideal, and aging has become something to halt, hide or hack, Göteborg Film Festival 2027 looks at the dream of eternal youth. With the theme Focus: Forever Young, the festival is set to explore our era’s obsession with staying young, and what might happen when the boundaries between life’s phases are erased. The theme is given additional significance by the fact that the festival celebrates its 50th anniversary.  To be young has never been more desirable, nor more difficult to define. In a time when we are told that 50 is the new 30, and when medicine, technology, and AI give us the hope of extending our lives, our view of aging is also becoming altered. Meanwhile, different generations live increasingly similar lives, and what it really means to be an adult is becoming less and less clear.  

Pia Lundberg, artistic director of Göteborg Film Festival said:

“We live in a time when everyone is expected to want to be young, no matter how old we actually are. But what happens when we’re never really allowed to grow old? With Focus: Forever Young we want to explore this era’s fixation with youth and ask questions about identity, life choices and what it means to become older.”

 

Cinema has always been fascinated by youth, but also aging, transformation, and how we fight the passage of time. This theme has been depicted in everything from coming-of-age films and stories of youthful rebellion to depictions of nostalgia, loneliness, and the fear of becoming old. The history of cinema is also filled with characters who resist growing up, people who try to start over, and a society that worships the young while marginalizing the old.  

For Göteborg Film Festival, the theme has special significance in 2027. The festival is being held for the 50th time and has, for half a century, followed generations of filmmakers and audiences. At the same time, the medium of film is still young and permanently changing, with a talent for reinventing itself.

Pia Lundberg said:

“As Göteborg Film Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary, Forever Young feels like a particularly suitable theme. We have grown older as a festival, but our curiosity about cinema and the world around us is as strong as it’s ever been. There’s something beautiful about that paradox: turning 50 by examining what it really means to be young.”

 

Through film screenings and discussions, Focus: Forever Young will give audiences new perspectives on being young, growing older, and society’s quest for immortality.  

Three films included in Focus: Forever Young

• The Revolution Against Death

Joshue Oppenheimer examines the dream of eternal life in a filmic poem about mortality, fear, longing and existential dread.

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Country: Denmark

• The End of It

A star-studded sci-fi satire in which immortality has become boring, and a 250-year-old artist finds new inspiration in the idea of the end of it all.

Director: Maria Martnez Bayona
Country: UK, Spain, Norway

• Once Upon a Time in Harlem

Legendary Harlem Renaissance figures deliver eternally-young perspectives at a cocktail party in Duke Ellington’s townhouse, 50 years after the movement’s heyday.  

Director: William Greaves, David Greaves
Country: USA