Om det oändliga / About Endlessness

 

Roy Andersson: Om det oändliga / About Endlessness (2019). Chagallian lovers hover over the ruins of Cologne in 1945.

Otto Dix: Bildnis der Journalistin Sylvia von Harden. 1928. Oil and tempera on wood. 121 × 89. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. – Roy Andersson singles out this painting as an inspiration to About Endlessness: "I am interested by the Neue Sachlichkeit artists because of the strength of their paintings. In my opinion they are extraordinarily sharp and detailed: everything is in focus, everything is very clear and distinct. You can't find this sharpness in film history: the background has to be out of focus. That's why I find these paintings very inspiring for my scenes: everything is in focus, even the grotesque moments in life".

Kukryniksy: Конец / The End (1946). Oil on canvas. 251 x 200. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Kukryniksy was the joint nom de plume of three artists working together. This painting is staged by Roy Andersson in vintage tableau vivant style in About Endlessness.

Kohti ääretöntä.
    SE/DE/NO © 2019 PC: Roy Andersson Filmproduktion AB. Co-PC: 4 ½ Fiksjon AS, Essential Films in association with Parisienne de Production, Sveriges Television AB, Arte France Cinéma, ZDF/Arte, Film Capital Stockholm Fund. P: Pernilla Sandström, Johan Carlsson.
    D+SC: Roy Andersson. Cin: Gergely Pálos – colour. Set design: Anders Hellström, Frida E. Elmström, Nicklas Nilsson. Wardrobe: Julia Tegström, Isabel Sjöstrand, Sandra Parment, Amanda Ribrant. Sound mix: Robert Hefter. Casting: Pauline Hansson, Katja Wik, Zora Rux
    C: Martin Serner (The Priest), Jessica Louthander (The Narrator), Tatiana Delaunay and Anders Hellström (The Flying Couple), Jan Eje Ferling (The Man in the Stairs), Bengt Bergius (The Psychiatrist), Thore Flygel (The Dentist).
    Soundtrack selections include:
– "All of Me" (Gerald Marks, Seymour Simons, 1931), perf. Billie Holiday (1941).
– "Stilla natt, heliga natt" / "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" (Franz Xaver Gruber, Joseph Mohr, 1818).
    76 min
    International Sales: Coproduction Office.
    Festival premiere: 3 Sep 2019 Venice Film Festival.
    Swedish premiere: 15 Nov 2019.
    Finnish premiere, 9 Oct 2020, distributed by Cinema Mondo, with Finnish subtitles by Anitra Paukkula.
    Viewed at Kino Engel 1, Helsinki, 16 Oct 2020.

The Priest: I have lost my faith...
The Psychiatrist: I'm sorry, but I have to catch my bus.

AA: About Endlessness is Roy Andersson's sixth feature film on a career that has spanned over six decades. After the commercial failure of Giliap (1975), Andersson took a 25 year break from feature films, instead directing 400 advertising spots and becoming "the best director of commercials in the world" (Ingmar Bergman).

According to Andersson, it was Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue (1988–1989) that inspired him back to features. Andersson made a remarkable short, Härlig är jorden / World of Glory (1991) that resonates strongly with the forthcoming features.

Härlig är jorden starts with a re-enactment of a Nazi-style murder van, where naked passengers are gassed with an exhumation pipe. "History started with Auschwitz", says Roy Andersson, born on the first year of the Endlösung. "Härlig är jorden" is the Swedish title of a popular hymn, sung in John F. Kennedy's funeral as "O God of Loveliness". Ten years later Andersson started his "Living Trilogy". I have not yet seen its third film, A Pigeon Sat on A Branch Reflecting on Existence.

By Härlig är jorden Andersson had his signature style in place: a revival of the early cinema mode of tableaux (and even the special fashion of tableaux vivants), based on long takes, long shots, plan-séquence, immobile camera and deep focus. The lighting is neutral, without contrast. The faces of the actors are smeared in pancake makeup, and there is an affinity with the "white clown", the Pierrot of the commedia dell'arte. Almost everything has been shot in the studio.

Simultaneously with Andersson's comeback feature, Songs from the Second Floor, the tableau style became fashionable in the competition series of prestigious film festivals. I soon developed a fatigue for that fashion. At the time I was seeing a great many original early cinema tableau films of "a hundred years ago" in Pordenone and Bologna. Already in the 1960s as I grew into cinephilia, I was about to launch myself onto a heavy diet of plan-séquence films by Michael Snow, Andy Warhol and Chantal Akerman.

Enough endlessness for me? No, because clearly Andersson is now presenting something new, something special, a chef-d'œuvre. There are direct links to Härlig är jorden of almost 30 years ago. Among the vignettes is Andersson's vision of "der Untergang", complete with Hitler and Bormann in the bunker. Andersson creates a tableau vivant in direct homage to Kukryniksy's painting The End (see above). Another powerful sequence shows German prisoners-of-war on a death march to Siberia. In a further vignette an execution by firing squad is staged. The emblem of the movie is a homage to Marc Chagall's flying lovers – over the ruins of Cologne after WWII.

For the first time, Andersson employs a voice-over: the beautiful voice of a female narrator (Jessica Louthander). Andersson compares her with Scheherazade. Andersson also refers to the narration of Hiroshima mon amour (where we have a female narrator challenged by the male). The introductions are terse: “I saw a man with his daughter on their way to a birthday party... it rained a lot.” “I saw a woman... a communications manager, incapable of feeling shame.” “I saw a couple, two lovers... floating above a city, renowned for its beauty, but now in ruins.”

The dimension of love and beauty is essential as a counterweight to the horror. The father helping tie his little daughter's shoestrings in pouring rain. The carefree dance of young girls in front of a summer café. The student couple discussing theoretical physics: "The first law of thermodynamics states that everything is energy and it can never be destroyed. That means you are energy, I am energy."

The existential guilt will not fade away, but regeneration is possible. Roy Andersson takes up a theme that has resonated during the history of the cinema, not least in Sweden: the loss of faith. An early masterpiece dealing with this was Mauritz Stiller's The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924), based on the novel by Selma Lagerlöf and starring Lars Hanson (who also played Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter). John Ford's Gösta Berling was Preacher Casey (John Carradine) in The Grapes of Wrath (Ford pursued the topic also in The Fugitive, based on Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory). We could cite Bresson, Bergman and Tarkovsky. "God is dead" was a widespread feeling already after WWI, and even more devastatingly after WWII. Most recently the theme has been revived by Paul Schrader in his masterpiece First Reformed.

The priest (Martin Serner) is perhaps the most prominent recurring figure in About Endlessness. He is seen re-living the stations of the Cross. "Crucify him!" He wakes up from the nightmare. He gets drunk by liberal helpings from a bottle of sacramental wine. He visits a psychiatrist who is unable to help. The best that the psychiatrist can offer by way of help is to propose that perhaps God does not exist.

A man disturbs the mood by crying on a train. Passenger: "Are you not allowed to be sad anymore?" Other Passenger: "But why can't he be sad at home instead?" A patient refuses anesthesia at the dentist's. A father stabs his daughter to death to defend family honour. In a restaurant, a waiter pours red wine to a glass until it spills over. A car engine shuts off while a wedge of cranes flies towards the horizon in the sky.

Roy Andersson stages a disturbing collection of "pictures at an exhibition". Many great film-makers have recently offered some of their best work at a respectable age: Oliveira, Lanzmann, Wiseman, Wajda, Varda, Godard... To their number belongs also Roy Andersson, who is at his best in About Endlessness.

PS. 19 Oct 2020. Silja Rantanen notices an affinity in the narration with J. L. Runeberg's epic poem The Tales of Ensign Stål (1848 and 1860):

"Jag såg ett folk som kunde allt
Blott ej sin ära svika".

["I saw a people capable of anything / except to betray its honour"].

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MATERIAL FROM THE PRESS BOOK ETC.:

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MATERIAL FROM THE PRESS BOOK ETC.:

Guidade av en drömlik kvinnoröst får vi följa med på en resa genom livets stora och små skeenden; ett par svävar över ett krigshärjat Köln, en far stannar för att knyta sin dotters skor i hällregnet och tre tonårsflickor dansar utanför ett kafé; ett kalejdoskop över existensen och oändligheten.

SYNOPSIS

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendour and banality. We wander, dreamlike, gently guided by our Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments take on the same significance as historical events: a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe; a defeated army marches to a prisoner-of-war camp. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

LONG SYNOPSIS

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendour and banality. We wander, dreamlike, guided by our gentle-voiced narrator. She leads us through scenes where inconsequential moments take on the same significance as historical events: a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; a defeated army marches to a prisoner-of-war camp. Where there is tragedy there is also hope, and humour. A priest who feels utterly hopeless, having not only lost his faith but his vocation, seeks help from a psychiatrist, but the doctor doesn’t work for free and is intent on catching his bus home. There are moments too of vitality, the infectious energy of teenagers dancing outside a café; a young man who has not yet met love; another who expands his mind with scientific thought. Each vignette captures the essence of what it is to exist. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite, timeless story of the vulnerability of existence.

The Priest: I have lost my faith...
The Psychiatrist: I'm sorry, but I have to catch my bus.

ROY ANDERSSON ON ABOUT ENDLESSNESS
AN INTERVIEW BY PHILIPPE BOBER

Some  of  the  themes  in  ABOUT  ENDLESSNESS  are  present  in  your other films: optimism represented by youth, but also war and despair, and the absence of God. Here you show a priest who doesn't believe in God. Would you say there is always a balance between hope and despair?

Roy Andersson: The main theme of my work is the vulnerability of human beings. And I think it is a hopeful act to create some-thing  showing  vulnerability.  Because  if  you  are  aware  of  the vulnerability of existence, you can become respectful and careful of what you have.

I wanted to emphasize the beauty of existence, of being alive. But of course, to get that, you need to have a contrast. You need to show the bad side, the cruel side of existence.

Looking at art history, for example, a lot of paintings are very tragic. But even if they depict cruel and sad scenes, by painting them the artists have in some way transferred the energy and created hope. For each of your films you have taken inspiration from paintings. What were your influences for ABOUT ENDLESSNESS?

I am interested by the Neue Sachlichkeit artists because of the strength of their paintings. In my opinion they are extraordinarily sharp and detailed: everything is in focus, everything is very clear and distinct. You can't find this sharpness in film history: the background has to be out of focus. That's why I find these paintings very inspiring for my scenes: everything is in focus, even the grotesque moments in life.

I am often very jealous of painting because I feel that film history doesn’t have the same quality as painting history. I really want movies to be as rich as painting can be.

Is there one specific painting that inspired you for this film?

I like Otto Dix’s "Portrait of the journalist Sylvia von Harden" very much.

The Neue Sachlichkeit movement took place in the 1920s just before the apocalypse. Would you say that ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is also taking place just before an apocalypse?

I hope not. It would be very pessimistic to think we are living in such a moment. I don’t think even Otto Dix believed an apocalypse was coming, but he warned us about the possibility. All of his paintings can be seen as warnings. That is also true for the Old Masters, they portray our existence but also warn us about its briefness: "Let us remember that life is not eternal. And you have to be thankful for the time you have left."

You also mentioned architecture as an influence, that the Swedish Functionalism movement of the 50's was an inspiring aesthetic element for your films.

What is the connection between functionalism and ABOUT ENDLESSNESS?

I had the ambition to show existence in all its aspects: that includes functionalism, modernism, Stalinism. It's a mixture of multiple ambitions to create houses, to create societies. I didn't have the ambition to create a pure style, I wanted to show our time, and in Sweden, functionalism was very popular and used abundantly.

You have said that the presence of a narrator in the film is inspired by the character of Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights. Is this also why you chose a woman to be the storyteller?

Yes, that was a choice. I was hesitant: I tried with a man, and even with my voice but finally found it more interesting to choose a woman. She's like a fairy, very clever, maybe even eternal. It is the first time that I have used a voice over, it is new to me. I was influenced by the voice in HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR.  In  certain scenes, the main character describes what the audience sees on screen at the same time. And I really loved it.

Your films always include historical scenes, why is it so important for you?

I've always been very interested in history. It was my major at university: I studied history of literature, history of philosophy, even Nordic languages. I was especially interested by the two World Wars. For instance, I was fascinated by the pictures of WWI that I saw as a teenager.

In the film, the war scenes depict the losers. Why?

Yes, winners are not interesting. Because we are all losers in some sense. It is important to acknowledge that in the end no one is a winner. I am not a pessimistic person but the fact is: there is no hope. Life is a tragedy. I'm not the first person to say it.

I thought it was about hubris, represented by Charles XII, or Hitler in your films.

Yes, in some periods in your life, especially when you're young, you experience this hubris. You think you are invulnerable, that you will always win. That is very characteristic of young and strong people. I also experienced that feeling myself, especially when I was around 25 and had just made A SWEDISH LOVE STORY. That was my hubris period, when I thought I would always be a winner, that I would never lose if I fought and worked hard enough.

I wanted to ask you about youth in your films: what does it represent for you?

It's very beautiful, most of the time. I especially like to look at children because they are so full of ideas, hope and vitality; it's beautiful to look at. As long as you are young you keep this hope but then you lose it step by step, as you grow older. For instance, I really like the scene showing the father and daughter in the rain, on their way to a birthday party. The father forfeits his umbrella to help her, an act of selflessness, whilst the daughter just wants to have her shoes tied, and that is so nice to see. Also, in the scene with the girls dancing, I think it’s very charming to see the vitality of these young people who are very happy to exist, they love to dance and so that is what they do. There is something contagious about their energy.

You have a very special sense of humour. What do you find funny?

I think truth is very often funny. When I started my career, I was inspired by Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel and other Czech filmmakers. They showed us existence in a very humorous tone. Depicting people that are a little lost, so to say. Not losers, but a little lost. And I really like these films, showing us that kind of humour: small but very funny stories. A lot of filmmakers attempt to create this everyday humor, but it’s very easy to fail. I also fail many times, but I don’t give up.

Did you shoot everything in your studio?

Yes. Apart from one exterior, the scene with the German army marching, which was shot in Norway.

What were the most challenging scenes in the film, from a technical point of view?

It has to be the flying couple scene. Even setting aside the making of the model city of Cologne, it took us a very long time. The scale is maybe 1/200. For example, the Cathedral, is half a meter high. The whole city is an enormous set. It took a month to build.

What does this scene mean to you?

It is a terrible reminiscence from History: that a beautiful city was bombed and destroyed. But in spite of that, I wanted to show that life goes on. Love, tenderness, sensuality keep existing. It was important to show these sides of existence over a destroyed city.

Though you have these historical scenes, there is a sense of timelessness to your films and here it also ties into the title.

Yes, I wanted to have these scenes which are very close to being timeless though we see it is September or snowing or a historical scene there should be a feeling of timelessness. Again, I am inspired by paintings, an artwork that talks to us in our time talked to others two hundred years ago, or more. It suggests that we human beings are quite similar throughout the ages and time.

The "endlessness" of the title has nothing to do with the never-ending space. It is not in terms of science, endlessness in this film is about the endlessness of signs of existence, the signs of being human.

Passenger: Are you not allowed to be sad anymore?
Other Passenger: But why can't he be sad at home instead?

About Roy Andersson
Notes on a Transcendental Filmmaker
By Larry Kardish, film critic and curator

The world premiere in Venice of ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is, for those of us who love the expansive possibilities of cinema, an occasion to celebrate. Andersson has developed such a genuinely distinctive and original way of making films that his works qualify as a genre of their own. His films have been highlights of festivals the world over and have received many significant international awards. Andersson has had retrospectives around the globe, including two in New York at The Museum of Modern Art in 2009 and the Museum of Arts and Design in 2015 titled,  the latter under the telling title “It’s Hard to be Human”.

Roy Arne Lennart Andersson was born in 1943 in Gothenberg during the Second World War when Sweden, a neutral country sold iron ore to Germany and provided a refuge for Jews fleeing Occupied Denmark and Norway. Although Andersson was an infant then, later, as filmmaker, the ambivalent position Sweden maintained during World War 2 echoes through the artist’s recurring themes of genocide, cruelty, bystander non-involvement and salvation.

A graduate of the Swedish Film Academy, Andersson’s early work was much influenced by the free-spirited youth-inflected and short-lived Czech New Wave best represented by Milos Forman (BLACK PETER, 1964 and LOVES OF A BLONDE,  1965),  Vera  Chytilova (DAISIES, 1966) and Jiri Menzel (CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS, 1966). Like the exuberant Czech films Andersson watched at the time, his own student works were also about relationships between young people and authority figures - parents and teachers, and like the films Andersson would go on to make, their narrative tension builds from miscommunication and a robust sense of the absurd.

Andersson’s first feature-length narrative, A SWEDISH LOVE STORY, was released to both critical and popular acclaim in 1970. A tale of puppy love between two working class adolescents with problem parents, A SWEDISH LOVE STORY is a refreshingly unsentimental and honest chronicle of hopes thwarted. Audiences identified with it, and although it is considered Andersson’s most  “traditional” feature, its “surprise” ending and its shots that are held slightly longer than convention, portend something “other”.

That “other” was GILIAP (1975) which went massively over budget and opened to virtually unanimous scorn in Sweden. Andersson, didn’t want to continue to make only films like A SWEDISH LOVE STORY, and he broke through his melancholy with a fantastical story of a new employee at a strange undistinguished hotel inhabited by a strange cast of characters.

Failure, in fact, made Andersson more famous than ever in Sweden as he turned to making commercials - almost 200 of them - that featured not only domestic appliances and comestibles, but insurance plans and even promotions for political parties. Their humor was deadpan, persuasive, and fellow countryman Ingmar Bergman thought Andersson was “the best commercials director in the world”. It is in and with these small “movies” that Andersson developed his idiosyncratic shooting strategy.

Andersson’s success from his work in commercials gave him the financial means to establish a  production house in Stockholm, Studio 24, and to assemble in 1981 a dedicated crew of technicians and assistants, many of whom have worked with him ever since. The creation of his own studio allowed Andersson to work in his own manner and perfect a signature style that would distinguish the films in the “Trilogy”.

Andersson said he was inspired to return to filmmaking by Kieslowski’s DECALOGUE. Both Kieslowski and Andersson are artists concerned with humanity’s penchant for turning on itself. In 2006, Studio 24 organized a gallery exhibition, “Sweden and the Holocaust”, which traveled across Sweden trying to comprehend the incomprehensible – the genocide which took place in the countries surrounding Sweden in the early 1940’s.

Andersson’s  films  comprise a series of standalone sequences, each off kilter in itself, that as a whole cohere spiritually. Sometimes a character from one absurd scene appears in another sequence, providing a kind of narrative thread - but not necessarily. The films evolve through an alchemical reduction of visual and acoustic elements, precisely controlled by a master artist. As  Andersson  himself  puts  it,  “If  you  can  combine  technical perfection with a beautiful energy and poetry, then it is fantastic. That’s what I want to achieve, and it is extremely difficult”. The miracle of Andersson’s films is that they illuminate much that is unpleasant and unmoored about us, but this  illumination is motivated by a moral responsibility and a love of humanity.

ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is inspired, Andersson says, by the frame of “1001 Arabian Nights” a collection of stories told by the virgin bride Scheherazade to her husband, the king, night after night to postpone her unjust execution the next morning for alleged future infidelity. Scheherazade would break off her stories mid-plot to keep her listener wanting to hear more on the next evening, and so for 1,001 nights she kept the king in suspense and herself alive. At that point the king rescinded his order for her death.

ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is the purest of Andersson’s films. In spite of its caustic view of humanity it soars like its lovers, and its despair has the weight of helium. It is an authentic transcendent work. I, for one, like Scheherzade’s royal husband, am eager for more Andersson tales, and impatiently look forward to ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, Part One Thousand and One.

“If you can combine technical perfection with a beautiful energy and poetry, then it is fantastic. That’s what I want to achieve, and it is extremely difficult.” - Roy Andersson

Boy: The first law of thermodynamics states that everything is energy and it can never be destroyed. That means you are energy, I am energy. And that your energy and my energy can never cease to exist. It can only be transformed into something new. Theoretically our energies can meet again in millions of years. And then, maybe you're a potato... or a tomato.

Girl: Then I'd rather be a tomato.

MAKING ABOUT ENDLESSNESS
A conversation with producer Johan Carlsson

ABOUT ENDLESSNESS was made using the traditional Studio 24 methods but we also had to develop and refine some of our production techniques to be able to bring to life the images that Roy envisioned.We sketch out scenes with drawings and Roy’s paintings, but we are now also using computers to create 3D images of the scenes. We  are  using  new  methods  such  as  laser-cutting  (for  example, for cutting out buildings from Styrofoam or the intricately detailed trees used in backgrounds). This hasn’t really sped up the process that much but it allows Roy greater freedom in creating the scenes.

“I saw a woman... a communications manager, incapable of feeling shame.”

This is a scene made in our traditional way with techniques we have used many times before. Everything seen through the window is made up of models. A small green screen was added behind the woman’s head in order for us to seamlessly add the moving sky afterwards. We filmed extras separately and added them in the building to the very right of the scene. We filmed each floor of the building separately, moving the furniture up a floor and rearranging  it each time.

“I saw a couple, two lovers... floating above a city, renowned for its beauty, but now in ruins.”

The model of Cologne was built in our studio. The set designers found a great way of doing this by  laser cutting models out of Styrofoam in standard building shapes and to achieve the look of devastation, the team crumbled bits off the models by hand. They also used dark Styrofoam so it didn’t need much painting to achieve the right look.When we have created big scenes like this before we have had ten to fifteen people working with the models, but now it was just three or four.The couple are both hanging from wires, but the man is also lying on a support. We tried a lot of different methods to work out how to create the floating couple. Suspending two people and making them appear to be flying is easy to do, but we were trying to create Roy’s vision inspired by Chagall’s paintings. Making it as realistic as possible but without making it too real, Roy always wants the images to have an abstract quality.

“I saw a man with his daughter on their way to a birthday party... it rained a lot.”

It is a technique that we have previously used in A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE. What is seen in the center of the image was shot in the studio with the actors, and the rest was a model that we built in our smaller studio.We built a rain machine to make the rain the way we wanted it to look, but we couldn’t use it when we shot the background (as the rain droplets would have been too large for the smaller model) so the water hitting the puddles was inserted digitally.

Biography
Roy Andersson

Roy Andersson was born in 1943 in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 1969, he  graduated  from  the  Swedish  Film  School,  and  the  following year his first feature, A SWEDISH LOVE STORY, won four prizes at the Berlin Film Festival.Andersson’s second feature, GILIAP premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 1976. Following GILIAP, Andersson took an extended break from filmmaking and became a successful commercials director, winning a total of eight Golden Lions at Cannes. His advertising career enabled Andersson to establish Studio 24 in Stockholm in 1981, allowing him to  freely  produce and make his films and where he would develop his unique style. His short films, SOMETHING HAPPENED (1987) and WORLD OF GLORY (1991) won prestigious awards including the Press Prize at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.

Andersson began filming SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR in his studio in 1996 and it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, where it won the Special Jur y Prize. It was the first chapter of  The  Living  Trilogy,  which  was  followed  up  in  2007  with  YOU, THE LIVING, also premiering in Cannes, where it was selected in Un Certain Regard. In 2009, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition of Andersson’s work, presenting not only his films but also a number of his commercials. The exhibition celebrated Andersson’s distinctive filmmaking style,  characterized by stationary shots, meticulously conceived tableaux, absurdist comedy and an essential humanity.

Fifteen years in the making, Andersson’s fifth feature film and the final chapter of The Living Trilogy, A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE premiered at the 2014 Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Film. ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is Andersson’s sixth feature and premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2019.

Filmography:
ABOUT ENDLESSNESS (2019)
A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE (2014)
YOU, THE LIVING (2007)
SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000)
WORLD OF GLORY (1991, short)
SOMETHING HAPPENED (1987, short)
GILIAP (1975)
A SWEDISH LOVE STORY (1970)