Sweden

“Like a collaboration between Monty Python and Samuel Beckett in the last days of the Neue Sachlichkeit. You just have to watch it, then grab a net and try to coax your soul back down from the ceiling.” (Robbie Collin, The Telegraph)
 
“A cavalcade of oddness, humour, banality and even horror...manages the uniquely Anderssonian trick of not just making you notice the absurdity of existence, but reminding you to love that absurdity as well. Life is unlikely, humans are ridiculous, and the world is cruel: isn’t it great?” (Jessica Kiang, IndieWire)
 
“A cross between a Where’s Waldo cartoon and a Gregory Crewdson photograph, the best way to approach it is as you might a large-canvas painting or a Jacques Tati film. Where other directors seek out exceptional moments, Andersson endeavors to capture the poetry of the mundane.” (Peter Debruge, Variety)
 
Concluding the trilogy on being human (along with Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living), A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE follows Sam and Jonathan, a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho, two travelling salesmen peddling grotesque party masks and quarrelling continuously. Sam, who considers himself the brains of the operation, ceaselessly patronizes his companion. Jonathan is slow and phlegmatic, finding happiness in the simple act of eating. Taking us on a kaleidoscopic wandering through multiple human destinies, the two inspire hilarity as much as gravity. We wander through the film, tasting the beauty and absurdity of the moment, surrounded by others all too much like ourselves. It is a journey that unveils the beauty of single moments, the pettiness of others, the humour and tragedy hidden within us, life’s grandeur as well as the ultimate frailty of humanity.

Kung Fury is an ambitious short film of high production value, which manages to pack every trope of the 80s cop movie genre. We encounter a visual compilation of all time monsters and patterns of action movies, the notion of going back to the past and a battle between good and evil, where the first one is helped by the presence of human-animal hybrids and the latter is the ultimate villain, Adolf Hitler. Apart from being a homage to all the impressive things of the 80s, its stylistic approach and thrilling visual effects mark its camp aesthetic with a sensibility based on deliberate and self-acknowledged theatricality; its graphics and cover story deepens in our brain and reveals a metatextual and an iconic construction of a cult and hip short film. (Claudia Cojocariu, BIEFF)

Winner of the Cinema & Gioventù prize for Best International Short at the 2015 Locarno International Film Festival, Marcus Lindeen’s movie is an absorbing mood-piece on the search for identity within the mirrored reflection of cinema. In 1980 jazz musician Kazzrie Jaxen had a life-changing experience watching Ingmar Bergman’s From the Life of Marionettes. Immersed within his cinematic world of duality and fissured identities, she realized she was a ‘womb-twin survivor,’ the only child born from a dual pregnancy. Lindeen explores this with utmost gentility through a form of cinematic stream-of-sub-consciousness, observing Jaxen episodically as she engages in the process of internalizing this discovery. Accessible but hiding intricate layers of narrative and formal complexity, Dear Director is a wonderful objet d’art of cinematic musicality that unwinds more with each viewing. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)

An intimate portrayal of loneliness that comes with old age, THIS IS NOW masterfully captures in black and white images the feeling of isolation and longing felt in old age. Downhearted voice-overs of elders intimately speak to us of the universal difficulties that each person experiences: the physical and psychic need for affection and the recurring memories of dear ones. The stillness of the shots emphasizes a heavily bearing atmosphere, where the layers of gray in the image suffocate the space, hope and finally, the sanity of the soul. (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)

 

“A word is not a simple and separate entity but part of other words”, says Virginia Woolf in her last known recording, as used in Man by Maja Borg. Since language creates the reality it describes, then no aspect of reality “is a simple and separate entity”. Intelligently playing with this notion, the director re-enacts cliché depictions of manliness while pregnant, thus bleeding dry of their initial connotations the images and the stereotypical ideas they represent. The mix of super 8mm footage and watercolour-negative animation makes for a poignant and innovative parallel between the body’s ability to create new life to the artist’s ability to create new meaning. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2017)

When the family fails to satisfy basic psychological needs, computer games may step in, offering - albeit only in a virtual version - rewards, freedom and a connection to other individuals sharing the same interests. Escaping occasionally to some parallel world and morphing into a daring, powerful and highly self-confident hero can be refreshing. Yet, refusing to return to real life spells destructive dependence. Jonas Odell uses in I Was a Winner the very imagery of the gaming world to deliver the personal narratives of three people who have experienced computer game addiction. Under the shape of their avatars and wandering through the landscape of their respective games, the characters tell uncanny stories of a to and fro motion between the real and the illusory, and of the struggle you need to put up to break free when the gaming goes beyond fun. The real world with all its imperfections is out there, waiting, provided you are strong enough to log out. (Adina Marin, BIEFF 2017)