The houses of this residential estate in western Sweden are all made of pale wood and are surrounded by neat hedges. The carports, children's playgrounds and woods that lie just beyond the Lidl supermarket car park are likewise an eloquent affirmation of the middle-class "quality of life" ideal. An eleven-year-old whose head is rumbling with brutal thoughts is growing up here. Sebastian is an only child living with his mother. He observes the not-quite-so-young men in his neighborhood with the avidness of a detective. There's Jimmy, who always carries his little son around with him and has had to go back to living with his parents, who deny him his own key to the house. And then there's Anders, who always jogs until his fleece jacket is dripping with sweat. Like a seismograph the boy picks up on the inner turmoil of those around him. It's midsummer, the neighbors are having parties on their terraces and things begin to get scary.

The Forum programme is now available online. Detailed information and screening dates of all films can be found via the Program menu point.

The Best First Feature Award was set up by the Berlinale in 2006 in order to promote new filmmaking talent. Ten films from the Forum program have been nominated for this year’s prize.

Winter's Bone, which was shown in the last year's Forum programme, has been nominated in a range of different categories including Best Film at the 2011 Oscars. "Dogtooth" by Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous film Kinetta was shown at the 2006 Forum, was also nominated for 'Best Foreign Language Film'.

In this year's Forum Expanded 42 artists, filmmakers, performers and musicians from 16 countries will present cinematic works in exhibitions, screenings, radio broadcasts and on stage.

A surprisingly large number of films in this year's Forum deal with family, relationships and identity. While exploring the human psyche is the number one subject for independent filmmakers from the whole world, many of these films can also be read politically within the context of social change and political upheaval.

Camille, a young woman from a bourgeois background, is bored with her life. Seeking intensity, she decides to give her love - not to the most attractive man, but to just anybody. To someone she thinks is in need of her. Like Costa, a roamer who lives in a bunker and at first glance is neither worthy of loving nor capable of it. Fascinated by Camille, a policeman follows the two.

After receiving a whole range of important prizes during the current award season, Debra Granik's Winter's Bone has been chosen as one of the ten best films of the year by the American Film Institute as well as the number one film of 2010 by New York Magazine. The film is now seen as a favorite for an Oscar nomination.

Bradley Rust Gray's The Exploding Girl and Debra Granik's Winter's Bone have both been nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards. "The Exploding Girl", which received its world premiere at the 2009 Forum, is up for the John Cassavetes Award, while "Winter's Bone" has received nominations in seven different categories.

The upcoming edition of Forum Expanded focuses on films, videos and installations that challenge political thought in aesthetic form and will also be taking to the radio waves for the very first time.