Audiences to be put in hypnotic trance at Swedish film festival

Three screenings at this year's Goteborg festival will transform the audience's state of mind' with a live hypnotist on stage

The Goteborg film festival is no stranger to stunts. It has previously featured screenings for a single audience member at a North Sea lighthouse, as well as coffin screenings" in which lucky viewers were interred inside a sarcophagus to enhance their sensory empathy.

This year, festival directors are planning to put the entire audience under by hiring a hypnotist for three gala screenings. Ahead of Swedish premieres for Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria, Shirin Neshat's Land of Dreams and Christian Tafdrup's Speak No Evil, a hypnotist will appear on stage to transform the audience's state of mind in accordance with the mood and theme of the film".