This year's Gothenberg International Film Festival (Jan 25-Feb 4) will comprise 450 films from 67 countries, with around 40 seminars, the Nordic Film Market andnumerous concerts.

The festival will be bookended by two local films, both about brothers in conflict - Jens Jonsson's The Ping Pong King (Ping-pongkingen), competing in Sundance's World Cinema section, and Miko Lazic's Iscariot (Iskariot), which will both have their world premieres at Sweden's premier fest.

'After last year's 30th anniversary we were wondering how to match that programme. But I think we have done it,' said festival director Marit Kapla.

As usual Swedish cinema is the cornerstone of the festival and all 29 Swedish features from 2007 will be screened in the Svenska Bilder sidebar, adding seven new productions, a television series and 106 shorts.

Otherwise Mexico is in focus, as New Mexico, with 12 films including six new features on show.

International films will be screened in 30 different sections, with a Masters' Section opened by Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of the World, and contributions by Bernard Émond, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Dorota Kedzierzawska, Jiri Menzel, Takashi Miike, Manoel de Oliveira, Ermanno Olmi and Wayne Wang.

Among 80 foreign guests, will be Menzel, Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, Polish director Lech Majewski, Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaurang, French director Philippe Ramoswill, US directors Julie Taymor, Tim Perkis and Michael Kang will attend the event.

Eight films from the Nordic countries have been selected to compete for the $16,000 Nordic Film Prize - three from Denmark and Sweden, one from Iceland and Norway.

Local entries include Jonsson's openinig film, Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right Person Enter (Låt den rätte komma in) and Patrik Eriksson's An Extraordinary Study In Human Degradation (En enastående studie i mänsklig förnedring).

Norway's official Oscar contender, Petter Næss' Gone with the
Woman (Tatt av kvinnen), has also entered the list.

For the second time, Göteborg will award a new talent with the Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award (which last year went to UK director Andrea Arnold, for Red Road).

This year the jury, presided over by German director Margaretha
von Trotta, will choose among Estonian director Ilmar Raag (The Class), Spanish director Jaime Rosales (Solitary Fragments), French director Celine Sciamma (Water Lilies), German director Ann-Kristin Reyels (Hounds) and Canadian director Stephane Lafleur (Film Without Guns).

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