Göteborg To Host Audience Lie Detectors As Part Of Live Festival Experiment

Visitors to this year’s Göteborg Film Festival will be offered the chance to take part in a real-life lie detector test, and participants who pass the test will be rewarded with festival tickets as part of a new live experiment. 

Göteborg announced the lie detector experiment this afternoon. The experiment has been conceived in line with the Festival’s 2026 theme, Truth. Participants will undergo the lie detector test inside a purpose-built interrogation room, rigged with cameras, lighting, and physiological monitoring. Tickets won through the experiment will be known as Truth Tickets. 

To introduce the initiative, the festival has also produced a promotional film starring Alexander Karim and David Dencik, directed by Mats Udd, reflecting what the Festival has described as the value of truth in contemporary society.  

“Truth has become strangely negotiable in our time,”  Pia Lundberg, Artistic Director of Göteborg Film Festival, said in a statement. “By turning truth into a currency, we assign it a tangible value that is rarely emphasized. We want to create an experiment where lying has consequences.” 

Göteborg is known for its pulpy and often political interactive initiatives. In 2023, Ruben Östlund partnered with the Festival to host an interactive cinematic event where he directed how audiences view a film during a screening of his Palme d’Or-winning Triangle of Sadness. The event was titled This Is Cinema!”

This year’s lie detector session will take place at Gothenburg – Nordstan from January 16 to 18 and at Olof Palmes plats from January 24 to 26.

The 2026 Göteborg Film Festival runs from 23 Jan to 1 Feb, 2026.