Stockholm Achievement Award 2022: Fares Fares

From kind small town cop to corrupt Cairo criminal. Fares Fares' acting career has gone from soft to hard without stopping at "lagom" along the way.

In 1987, the Fares family fled from Lebanon to Sweden. Eldest son Fares was then 14 years old and in just three months he learned the language. He then followed his acting dreams just as purposefully.

Bitten by the theater scene, he forgot the safer idea of ​​becoming a civil engineer. Instead, he took the step into acting through a folk high school in Mölnlycke, where he also met Torkel Pettersson. Together they starred in director brother Josef's debut film, »Jalla! Jalla!« (2000). The film was a success in Sweden and was followed up by the police farce »Kopps« a couple of years later.

In 2012, Fares Fares had his international breakthrough in Daniel Espinosa's action thriller »Safe House«. Subsequently, roles in films such as »Zero Dark Thirty« and »Rogue One« have replaced each other in close succession. Even on the TV screen, we have seen Fares shine in masterpieces such as »Westworld« and Johan Renck's »Chernobyl«.

But perhaps it is in Tarik Saleh's »The Nile Hilton Incident« (2017) that he made his strongest impression so far. The role of the pill-popping and corrupt crime police Noredin was praised by critics and awarded with a Guldbagge. This year, the duo Saleh and Fares are reunited in the festival's opening film »Boy from Heaven« and soon he will also be working on his first film as a director – the Swedish Netflix thriller »A Day and a Half«.

With the deep worry wrinkle – clenched and bottomlessly hard – Fares Fares has a series of rough-and-tumble characters in his luggage. But his broad smile, charm and twinkle in his eye testify to a register that spans far beyond tormented loner – always with great integrity maintained.

Fares Fares will receive the Stockholm Achievement Award in connection with the premiere of »Boy from Heaven« on November 9th. Together with the director and screenwriter Tarik Saleh, Fares Fares will be there to inaugurate the festival and participate in a Face2Face before the screening.

Text: Matilda Arborelius