Pour l'éternité + Something Happened
The astonishing career of Roy Andersson reflects the radical personality of an extraordinary artist. After directing two contrasting first feature films in the 1970s, A Swedish Love Story (awarded at the Berlinale) and "Giliap ", he disappeared from the world of cinema for almost twenty-five years. During this period, he devoted himself to a career in advertising, founded his own production company, Studio 24, and made a few short films. And all this time, Andersson seems to have matured the work that has earned him international recognition since 2000: from the trilogy of the living to About Endlessness, four films with an immediately recognizable style, whose skilfully staged tableaux erect an absurd and grating chronicle of our all-too human world.
In 24 absurd scenes, Roy Andersson illustrates various aspects of the crisis surrounding the AIDS epidemic. The film was commissioned by the Swedish National Board of Health, which disowned it, and was not distributed until several years later.
With ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, Roy Andersson adds to his cinematic oeuvre with a reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendour and banality.
Roy Andersson
Born in Göteborg, Sweden, in 1943, Roy Andersson studied film at the Swedish Film Institute in Stockholm. After graduating, he directed A Swedish Love Story, which won several prizes at the Berlinale in 1970. Worried that this success would be too much for him, he made a radically different film five years later, Giliap, in which he tried his hand at black humor. This one does not meet the expected success, Andersson then leaves the world of cinema for an advertising career. He did not give up his vocation, however, and in 1981 he founded Studio 24 in order to be fully independent. He then made two short films in which he began to forge the style and tone that would make the recent period of his work so successful - four films released from 2000 to 2019 and acclaimed worldwide.
The program Roy Andersson : Endgame was initiated by TIFF and was made possible as part of NORDIC BRIDGES 2022 in collaboration with Harbourfront Centre, Toronto.
