Susan Sarandon, who attended the festival to receive the Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award, helped to unveil the canvas before the screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".

When director and actor Peter Fonda arrived at the festival as chairman of the jury in 2012, he made his entrance in style, escorted to the Skandia cinema by an entire motorcycle gang.

The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was part of the festival jury in 2013, but could not be present as he was under house arrest in his home country.

[citation needed] In 2021, due to the COVID pandemic, the Stockholm Film Festival pivoted to a hybrid model using a video-on-demand platform provided by Shift72.

[1] The festival has been visited by hundreds of filmmakers and since its inception, including Dennis Hopper, Lauren Bacall, Gena Rowlands, Charlotte Rampling, Susan Sarandon, Ang Lee, Andrea Arnold, David Cronenberg, Roman Polanski, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Claire Denis, Elia Kazan, Céline Sciamma, Francis Ford Coppola, Wong Kar-Wai, and Uma Thurman.

Summer Cinema has taken place in different venues in the Swedish capital, for example, Stockholm Olympic Stadium, Berzelii Park, and Rålambshovsparken.

It is also a paraphrase of a national design icon, the Swedish Dala horse, and was created by artist Fredrik Swärd.