Three screenings at this year’s Göteborg festival will ‘transform the audience’s state of mind’ with a live hypnotist on stage
![Audiences to be put in hypnotic trance at Swedish film festival](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0dd116a60254adc7044504b8d55c1d05cd18cfac/0_44_5420_3252/master/5420.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=834db976489928e5196136d614363cbd)
The Göteborg 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”.