Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland will be honored at the 2026 Göteborg Film Festival with the international Honorary Dragon Award.
During the festival, her new film Franz, a personal portrait of German writer Franz Kafka, will be screened, alongside a retrospective of her most influential works.
“Agnieszka Holland has repeatedly demonstrated how cinema can be both artistically groundbreaking and deeply rooted in the moral questions of our time. To welcome a filmmaker who for decades has explored the many layers of truth – the uncomfortable, the contradictory, and the profoundly human – is particularly meaningful this year, when the festival’s focus is precisely on truth,” says Pia Lundberg, Artistic Director of Göteborg Film Festival.
With films such as Europa Europa and In Darkness, the festival describes Agnieszka Holland as one of the most distinctive voices in European cinema and one of the most vital filmmakers of our time. Several of her films have been banned, she herself has been arrested, and most recently Green Border sparked political outrage in her home country.
During the festival, Holland will present her latest film Franz, a personal and playful interpretation of the life and legacy of Czech writer Franz Kafka. The film, Poland’s submission for the Academy Awards and which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, weaves together biographical fragments, fourth-wall breaks, and contemporary reflections in a freely flowing portrait of the man behind one of the most mythologized authorships of the 20th century.
The retrospective will feature several of Holland’s most influential films, including Europa Europa, Green Border, The Secret Garden, Screen Tests, and Provincial Actors.
This marks her return to the Göteborg Film Festival, which featured her work as early as its inaugural edition in 1979, when she was one of the directors behind the opening film Screen Tests.
The 2026 Göteborg Film Festival takes place January 23–February 1.
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