Our mission was to create a bookable film experience that continues to position Göteborg Film Festival as a brave and innovative player on the international film festival scene.

The idea shall enhance this year's festival focus (Disorder), trigger the interest of the target audience and generate a large impact in both national and international media.

The mood you are in when going to the cinema might affect your ability to relax and focus, which sometimes can have a negative impact on a film experience. For a film festival with an audience that puts high value on quality this is of course a huge problem.

We transformed a classic movie theater into The Hypnotic Cinema – a mass hypnosis event. At three exclusive screenings a professional hypnotist appeared on stage to put the audience in a state of mind, specially adapted for the film they were going to see. Everything to help the audience to disconnect from alarming news reports, stress, conflicts and other distractions in their everyday life and just focus on the film.

The film industry has for a long time relied on technical innovations such as 3D, IMAX, THX and a number of other reinforcements in order to captivate the audience. But the Göteborg Film Festival audience deserves the very best, so we decided to use the most high-tech equipment that exists – the human brain.

To give our target audience (new and existing film festival visitors) the best possible film experience we invited them to a mind-bending experiment, where they were challenged to undergo mass hypnosis in order to get mentally calibrated before watching a film.

We created The Hypnotic Cinema. A cinema with three exclusive screenings at the Stora Teatern in Gothenburg, Sweden. There, the audience had the chance to undergo mass hypnosis to get mentally calibrated before the film started. A hypnotist appeared on stage to put the audience in a state of mind specially adapted for the film they were going to see. Afterwards, the participants had to respond to a survey about the experience.

To hype the event we created a press media kit with a twisted promo-film that challenged the audience to book tickets.

The three exclusive Hypnotic Cinema screenings were held January 30, February 2 & February 6.

3 exclusive screenings sold out immediately.

75% of the audience experienced that the hypnosis improved their ability to focus.

+650 press articles in 42 countries.

1.7 Billion estimated media impressions.

108 % above the festival visits target (target:130 000, result: 270 463 )

(Source: Meltwater)