Every year, the Berlin Film Festival hosts 10 young European actors selected for the Shooting Stars program run by European Film Promotion. This year, three Scandinavian actors were celebrated as the up-and-coming European acting talent to keep an eye on: Danish Besir Zeciri, Icelandic Elín Hall and Swedish Frida Gustavsson.

Past Shooting Stars include Alicia Vikander, Daniel Brühl, Daniel Craig, and Maisie Williams, who have gone on to successful international careers. This does not go unnoticed by its participants.

“Alicia is somebody that I’ve looked up to and who has been a kind of trailblazer for other Scandinavian talents,” says Frida Gustavsson via a Zoom call from Berlin about her fellow countrywoman, who was a Shooting Star in 2011. “I’ve been following the Shooting Star program ever since I started my career and I have seen the kind of trampoline effect that it had on the participants’ careers. It’s something I’ve worked towards and now with a project like Faithless that is so big in its scope, the time feels right.”

The Swedish actress, best known for her role as Freydís Eiríksdóttir, a Viking warrior, in the Netflix series Vikings: Valhalla (2022–2024), plays the seductive Marianne Vogler in Tomas Alfredson’s drama series Faithless. The series is based on an original script by Ingmar Bergman and is a tale of friendship, lust and the consequences of adultery.

“I think Bergman’s presence was there with us when we were shooting,” Frida Gustavsson says about Faithless. “Growing up, I loved Bergman. Watching Autumn Sonata changed my life and made me want to be an actor. He created these incredibly complex women and it was sad for me that he passed before I had the chance to work with him, so to be able to do this series was priceless.”

This year the three Scandinavians are joined by their European colleagues Maria Makris from Cyprus, Maarja Johanna Mägi from Estonia, Devrim Lingnau from Germany, Kārlis Arnolds Avots from Latvia, Šarūnas Zenkevičius from Lithuania, Lidija Kordić from Montenegro and Vicente Wallenstein from Portugal. They will all participate in a four-day program which includes workshops, meetings with casting directors, and introductions to the international press. 

“It is very useful and a great networking platform for us,” says Danish actor Zeciri via a Zoom call from Berlin. “And it also means a lot that somebody says ‘We believe in you. You are a shooting star.’ That is definitely a motivating factor.“

The 34-year-old actor is no stranger to awards. He won the Danish Robert Award in 2022 for Best Actor in a leading role for his performance in Laurits Flensted-Jensen’s TV series Outlaw (2021). The Shooting Stars recognition comes at a time, when Swedish director Magnus von Horn’s film The Girl with the Needle, which was nominated in the Non-English language category at this year’s Golden Globes, is up for an Oscar. It is a fictionalized crime-horror based on a real Danish baby-killer case from the 1920s and Zeciri plays a soldier who is scared and traumatized by war.

“The Shooting Star recognition means you get a lot of attention internationally and hopefully that leads to more international projects,” says Zeciri. “And it all seems to happen at the same time, so I am definitely having a moment, which is very exciting.”

For Icelandic Elín Hall, it is also important to network with the other nine actors in the program.

“I have spoken with some of the former Shooting Stars and everyone tells me that they make friends for life,” says Hall via a Zoom call from Berlin. “They make great connections that are helpful professionally and privately and attend each other’s weddings and I just feel very lucky to be able to connect with my peers.”

Hall can currently be seen as Una in Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson’s coming-of-age film When the Light Breaks. Una is a drama student, whose life is turned upside down, when her secret lover Diddi (Baldur Einarsson) gets in a car accident. The film, which is about dealing with loss, just celebrated its release in France with a premiere in Paris.

“It has just been crazy,” she says about her experiences since When the Light Breaks premiered in Cannes last year. “I’ve been traveling around the world with the film and I have met so many people. I now have an agent in London and I’ve spent a lot of time auditioning and now I am also a Shooting Star.”

Having broken out as a troubled teen in acclaimed Icelandic film Let Me Fall (2018), Hall has been acting steadily for about a decade and was recently seen as the young Vigdís Finnbogadóttir before she became the first female Prime Minister in Iceland in the Icelandic TV-series Vigdís. She hopes that her career will take a new turn with the Shooting Star recognition.

“Yes, absolutely,” the Icelandic actor says about creating an international career.  “I think all actors dream about getting to work with great people and Iceland is small and the opportunities are quite limited. And I really love European cinema, so this is an exciting opportunity.”

Frida Gustavsson is currently working on a “big” American project that is yet to be announced, and she is ready for more.

“I love Bergman and European cinema, but I would definitely not turn it down, if Hollywood starts calling,” she says.

As for Zeciri, he has no doubts what he would like to achieve. He already has a leading role in an upcoming film yet to be announced. But he hopes there is more to come in the near future.

“I want to be the villain in the next James Bond film,” the Dane says with a big smile. “I always dreamt about that. That is my main goal. And I want to have a great international career.”