Film Forum

1:00   3:15   8:15

Swedish director Roy Andersson is “renowned for his brilliant tragicomic visual gags and dreamlike visions, with hints of Beckett, Fellini and Monty Python” (The Guardian). His “living trilogy” — SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000), YOU, THE LIVING (2007), and A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH... (2014) — ruminates on the small pleasures and mordantly funny pains of life. BEING A HUMAN PERSON chronicles the making of his latest, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, providing a privileged glimpse inside his Stockholm studio, where his films are entirely constructed and shot: a funhouse of meticulously crafted trompe l’oeil set designs, actors (often plucked from the street) caked in grey makeup, and teeming with artisans who realize Andersson’s unique, painterly vision. An empathetic portrait of an artist in crisis that explores the high cost of the creative process.

Presented with support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund.

UK / SWEDEN    2020    90 MINS.     IN ENGLISH AND SWEDISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Plus sidebar series of rare screenings of Andersson’s Living Trilogy: SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR; YOU, THE LIVING; A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE and ABOUT ENDLESSNESS.

Reviews

“A fine documentary about Andersson.”
– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

“Funny and wistful...a treat for movie lovers. A film about filmmaking to stand alongside HEARTS OF DARKNESS and BURDEN OF DREAMS, this portrait of one-of-a-kind Swedish director Roy Andersson offers a generous, honest, insightful and at times rather sad glimpse of the man at work. It provides connective tissue between an artist and his art in a way that never forgets to bundle collaborators, co-conspirators and his whole surrogate family at hsi unique Stockholm studio into its warm embrace...a movie about an auteur in action.”
– Phil de Semlyen, Time Out

“The amazing artistry of [Andersson] is illuminated in this tribute, a documentary that follows the work on his latest film, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS… Anderson himself is known for the brilliant tragicomic visual gags and dreamlike visions, with hints of Beckett, Fellini and Monty Python… A valuable introduction to the movies and to the man.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (UK)

“Terrific, unexpectedly moving… Disinterring humour from the depths of desperation, breathing life into the anguish of mortality, with a colour palette that runs the gamut from concrete grey to cadaver blue, Andersson is an original.”
– Wendy Ide, The Observer (UK)

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