Swedish nurse wins a week of isolation, films amid pandemic

GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) — Cinema in lockdown: Scandinavia’s largest film festival is exploring the social isolation resulting from COVID-19 by setting up a temporary cinema-for-one on a desolated island in the North Sea with the only companionship the events’ entire movie selection and enough food to last the week.

Lisa Enroth was selected among 12,000 volunteers to spend a week on the island of Hamneskar at Pater Noster, a former lighthouse turned boutique hotel. An emergency ward nurse from Sweden with a passion for film, Lisa said the isolation would give her “time to reflect and be alone” after a busy year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year's Goteborg Film Festival, which runs from Jan. 29-Feb. 8, is certainly unique. “The Isolated Cinema” is only accessible by small boat and is located at the very edge of an archipelago in one of western Sweden’s most barren and windswept locations.

Enroth, who left for the island on Saturday, watches the films online either in her room or a living room, or she can watch them from the top of the lighthouse itself where organizers have set up a small screen surrounded by an amazing view.

The artistic director of the 44th Goteborg Film Festival, Jonas Holmberg, hopes this extreme viewing experience can help reflect on what the pandemic has done to our relationship with cinema.

“During this pandemic, so many people have turned to cinema when in isolation,” he said. “But the pandemic has also changed how we experience films.”

Like most events, the film festival has moved online as COVID-19 restrictions banned public gatherings, but organizers have set-up a real-time streaming platform accessible to people living in Sweden in a bid to replicate, albeit virtually, the collective cinema viewing experience.

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