Heads Up: These Promos for the Stockholm International Film Festival Get Their Weird On

Can you handle the next-level plot twists?

We all love a multi-genre movie option when choosing what’s next to watch. And a pair of ads promoting the Stockholm International Film Festival deliver in an extreme way.

Just when you think you know the film type, these trailers pivot to a darker tone, under the festival’s “Films for Every Taste” tag.

In “Storytime,” actress Stina Ekblad reads a story to a young girl about miracles all around us. It’s sweet, until the room gets dark and the girl twists the head off her doll—and the same happens to our dear storyteller:

We’ve got romance in the next vid. A pregnant woman and her partner sit by a lake. So much love! He gifts her a locket. She whispers in his ear, “I’m your mother.” Paging Dr. Freud!

“It started with the idea of a film that keeps going with multiple packshots: same cast, same setting, but an entirely new story, tone, and genre,” says Carl Ewald Jannerfeldt, CD at agency Rocket—Science. “Production realities meant we had to settle for two packshots and two films instead, but we stayed true to the idea, in all its radical simplicity.”

The ads, directed by Gustav Egerstedt of Giants & Toys, are running in Swedish cinemas.

“Hedda Stiernstedt and Adam Lundgren, who play lovers in Romance,’ actually play siblings in a major Swedish TV series—which adds another layer of tension to their on-screen chemistry,” adds Egerstedt. “The cinematography was inspired by Love Story and other romantic dramas from the ’70s—if you look closely, you’ll notice the deliberately imperfect zoom at the end of the first act.”

“And for the fairytale film starring Ekblad—to make her head appear to twist around, she wore her costume backwards and sat in a custom-built armchair with a hole cut out of the back where her legs could pass through. A classic old-school film trick!”

CREDITS

Agency
Rocket—Science
Creative Director — Carl Ewald Jannerfeldt

Production Company
Giants & Toys
Director & Creative — Gustav Egerstedt
Director of Photography — Fredrik Bäckar
Producer — Linn Ulterman
Production Manager — Mira von der Burg
First Assistant Director — Mats Olsson
First AC — Kricke Norman
Wrangler — Emy Sjöblom
Gaffer — Nisse Vallin
Best Boy — Charles Ekström
Sound Recordist — Jesper van Dongen
Set Designer — Rasmus Alexander
Props Assistant — Linn Nordström
Stylist — Sofia Ringertz
Hair & Makeup — Kristin Good
Production Assistant — Zuzanna Orzweska
Offline & Online Editor — Mikael Hallmans
Color Grade — Oskar Larsson / Tint Post
Sound Design — Calle Buddee Roos / Ponytail Sound
Music — Hank Berggren / MELT Music

Cast
Hedda Stiernstedt
Adam Lundgren
Stina Ekblad
Sophia-Noelle Orianwo

Client
CMO — Magnus Larsson
Marketing Assistant — Gulian Awde
Marketing & PR Assistant — Sara Höglund
Casting — Nadia Dahlin Akimey
Casting — Georg Ekelund