Roy Andersson

Although Roy Andersson (*1943) has made just five feature films since his debut with 'A Swedish Love Story' (1970), he is one of the great stylists and philosophers of European cinema. A couple floats in the cloudy sky in a close embrace, a bombed-out landscape of ruins below them. A father ties his little daughter's shoelaces in the pouring rain. A priest has lost his faith, he seeks help from the doctor, but the practice has already closed. Scenes from Roy Andersson's latest film 'On Infinity' (2019) join together - as in other films by the director - to form a series of dramatically loosely connected episodes. In them, human existence is condensed in all its dignity and ridiculousness. Everything that happens appears profane and transcendent, everyday and surreal at the same time. Roy Andersson is a laconic narrator and an extremely precise choreographer who composes his films from miniatures in which the big picture is revealed precisely because hardly anything happens. Human life is portrayed tenderly and without compassion, the longing for love, the search for meaning, the burden of everyday life, the horrors of war, the transience of life and the dream of infinity.