This year’s Nobel Laureates are being celebrated with an outdoor cinema on Sergels torg

The cinema will be showing five short documentary films about people and organisations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize in prior years. The films have been produced in collaboration with National Geographic Documentary Films and the Award-winning director Orlando von Einsiedel.

“Just like the Nobel Prize itself, these films are about human beings’ capacity to find solutions to the challenges we face again and again,” says Erika Lanner, Director of the Nobel Prize Museum. “This year it feels particularly important to highlight achievements that give us hope for the future, and these films do just that.”

Artist and designer Fredrik Paulsen, who designed the cinema, expresses a similar idea:
“It feels important to do something that signals something positive. You could say that the design follows a modernist architectural tradition with the addition of contemporary colours and Covid-19.”

The result is a round structure divided into five areas, each with its own screen directed outward toward visitors and a bench for just a few of them to sit on. There are no passageways where visitors are forced to converge; instead, they can enter from any direction through strips of bright yellow transparent plastic. The new building stands directly on the plaza’s iconic black-and-white paving pattern. Paulsen has used the roof as a canvas rather than just a dead surface for protection from rain. Looking down from the street level now, you can see the psychedelic effect created by the pattern that is visible through the coloured material, which has become something of a signature for Paulsen.

Anna König Jerlmyr, Mayor of the City of Stockholm, took part in the opening of the cinema.

“The Nobel Laureates are fantastic sources of inspiration for lots of people all over the world,” she says. “The films that are now showing on Sergels torg, right in the heart of Stockholm, along with everything else that’s happening as part of Nobel Calling, can spark curiosity for learning, science and issues of democracy – particularly among young people. Hopefully they will be inspired to be awarded with the Nobel Prize in the future.”

The cinema is open around the clock until 12 October and is staffed by security guards for enhanced safety. There is no cost and no tickets are required.

One of the films – Lost and Found, which is about a man who works to reunite children and parents who have lost each other inside the world’s largest refugee camp – was recently nominated for an Emmy award. In the other films, we follow a team of Yazidi minesweepers in Iraq, meet a man who makes prosthetic legs for victims of the war in South Sudan, follow a team of researchers into a completely untouched forest in Mozambique, and meet a South African orchestra that uses music to bring their country together.

The outdoor cinema is a collaboration with Kulturhuset’s Klarabiografen cinema and the På Sergels Torg initiative. It is also the museum’s contribution to Digital@Idag 2020.

For more information, please contact:

press@nobelprize.org

Press photos and videos may be found here.

Read more about the programme and the films, and follow the announcements of this year’s Nobel Prizes live starting 5 October.

Nobel Calling Stockholm
Each year in early October, the year’s Nobel laureates are announced and the contributions they have made ‘for the greatest benefit to humankind’ are rewarded. Please join us for an inspiring event where you’ll meet a variety people who are making the world better. It’s a week when the importance of research, science, literature and peace takes centre stage. The events of Nobel Calling Stockholm are arranged by the Nobel Prize Museum in collaboration with the City of Stockholm, Karolinska Institutet, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University, Stockholm Public Library, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Forum/Debatt, Stockholm City Hall, Stockholm City Archives, the Swedish Research Council and the Riksbank. The events will be held both physically and digitally.

The Nobel Prize Museum
The Nobel Prize shows that ideas can change the world. The courage, creativity and perseverance of the Nobel Laureates inspire us and give us hope for the future. Films, in-depth tours, and artefacts tell the stories of the Laureates and their contributions ‘for the greatest benefit to humankind’. Based on the Nobel Prize’s unique combination of fields – natural sciences, literature and peace – we examine the greatest challenges of our time and show how we can respond to them through science, humanism and collaboration. With our exhibitions, school programmes, lectures and conversations, we at the Nobel Prize Museum strive to engage the public in making a better world. Today we are located at Stortorget in Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s Old Town district. We are planning to create a new home for our public outreach activities at Slussen in downtown Stockholm.