Roy Andersson | |
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 Andersson in 2014 | |
| Born | Roy Arne Lennart Andersson (1943-03-31)31 March 1943 (age 82) Uddevalla, Sweden |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1967–present |
Roy Arne Lennart Andersson (born 31 March 1943) is aSwedishfilm director, best known for his distinctive style ofabsurdist humor andmelancholic depictions of human life. His personal style is characterized by long takes, and stiff caricaturing ofSwedish culture and grotesque. Over his career Andersson earned prizes from theCannes Film Festival,Berlin International Film Festival andVenice International Film Festival.
Andersson spent much of his professional life working onadvertisement spots, directing over 400 commercials and twoshort films; directing sixfeature-length films in six decades. He made his feature film debut withA Swedish Love Story (1970) followed byGiliap (1975). Anderson received theCannes Film Festival Jury Prize forSongs from the Second Floor (2000). His filmA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) won theVenice International Film Festival'sGolden Lion. His other notable films includeYou, the Living (2007), andAbout Endlessness (2019).
Roy Arne Lennart Andersson was born on 31 March 1943 inUddevalla, the eldest of four brothers. He was raised inHisingen.[1][2][3]
He studied literature and philosophy at university, then entered theSwedish Film Institute Film School in 1967.[1]
He directed his first feature-length film,A Swedish Love Story (1969). The film, awarded four prizes the same year at the20th Berlin International Film Festival, looked at the nature and nuance of young love and turned out to be a major critical and popular success for Andersson. Following this success, Andersson fell into a depression. As he didn't want to get stuck with the same style and expectations he cancelled what was going to be his next project, with the script half-way finished, and skipped a couple of other ideas for plots he had previously planned to realize.[4] Eventually he directed the filmGiliap which was released in 1975. The film was a financial and critical disaster. AfterGiliap, Andersson took a 25-year break from film directing, focusing his efforts mainly on his commercial work.[1]
In 1981 he established Studio 24, an independent film company and studio located in centralStockholm. Later, he directed a short-film commissioned by theSwedish National Board of Health and Welfare entitledSomething Happened. Made in 1987, the short was meant to be played at schools all over Sweden as aneducational film aboutAIDS, but was cancelled when it was three-quarters complete because of its overly dark nature and controversial use of sources. The official explanation was that it was "too dark in its message," and it wasn't officially shown until 1993. His next short film, 1991'sWorld of Glory, developed this style even further and was a critical success, winning both theCanal Plus Award and the Press Prize at the 1992Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. The film is on a top ten list of all-time best short films, set by the Clermont-Ferrand festival.
In March 1996, Andersson began filmingSongs from the Second Floor, a film that was completed four years later in May 2000. After its premiere at the2000 Cannes Film Festival the film also became an international critical success. It won theJury Prize in Cannes[5] and fiveGuldbagge Awards in Sweden for best film, direction, cinematography, screenplay and sound. The film was made up of forty-six long tableaux shots, marrying tough, bleak social criticism with his characteristic absurdist dead-pan and surrealism.
Andersson continued his commercial work at Studio 24 and his next filmYou, the Living premiered at the2007 Cannes Film Festival as part of theUn Certain Regard selection. The film won theNordic Council Film Prize in 2008. TheMuseum of Modern Art in New York City presented a retrospective of Andersson's work in September 2009.
He expressed his desire to make a new film that could be considered the third part in a trilogy together with his two latest films, and publicly stated that he was planning "a third enormous, deep and fantastic, humorous and tragic, philosophical, Dostoyevsky film."[6] In an interview withIgnatiy Vishnevetsky, Andersson revealed that he would be shooting his next film inhigh-definition video, possibly using theRed One camera, and that it would represent a departure in style from his previous two films.[7] The film, titledA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence[8] was released in 2014 and won theGolden Lion for Best Film in competition at the71st Venice International Film Festival.
TheMuseum of Arts and Design in New York City presented a retrospective of Andersson's work entitledIt's Hard to Be Human: The Cinema of Roy Andersson in 2015.[9][10]
In 2019 he released his sixth filmAbout Endlessness which won theSilver Lion at theVenice International Film Festival. Peter Bradshaw ofThe Guardian praised the film writing, "[The film] is another of Andersson’s superb anthologies of the human condition: people with a zombie-white pallor enclosed in enigmatic tableaux, populating his utterly unique world of unreality and artificiality, scenes of tragicomedy inspired byTati andMonty Python and created with masterly model work and green-screen effects in the studio. He shows moments of all too human weakness, weariness, gentleness, bewilderment, despair; there are nauseating visions of war crimes, returning us to the genocidal horror he showed in his 1991 short filmWorld of Glory."[11]
Andersson has citedItalian neorealism and theCzech New Wave as major influences on his work.[12] He has also cited influences ranging from Spanish painterFrancisco Goya and the Dutch artistPieter Bruegel to the Italian directorFederico Fellini and French absurdist filmmakerJacques Tati.[13][14]
In 2012, Andersson participated in theSight & Sound film polls of that year. Held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, contemporary directors were asked to select ten films of their choice. Andersson stated: "All the ten films are excellent and fascinating artistic expressions about what I would call mankind’s both raw and delightful existence. These movies make us wiser." He added "My absolute favourite isBicycle Thieves, the most humanistic and political film in history.Viridiana is the most intelligent andHiroshima mon amour is the most poetic."[15] His choices are listed below, in alphabetical order:
Andersson is considered one of the most important living European film directors, having four films officially submitted for theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film asSwedish entries.
His 2014 filmA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence won theGolden Lion award at71st Venice International Film Festival, making Andersson the only Swedish director and the second Nordic director to win the award in the history of the festival, after DanishCarl Theodor Dreyer won in1955.[16]
| Year | English Title | Original | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | A Swedish Love Story | En kärlekshistoria | [18] |
| 1975 | Giliap | – | [19] |
| 2000 | Songs from the Second Floor | Sånger från andra våningen | [20] |
| 2007 | You, the Living | Du levande | [21] |
| 2014 | A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence | En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron | [22] |
| 2019 | About Endlessness | Om det oändliga | – |
| Year | English Title | Original | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Visiting One's Son | Besöka sin son | |
| 1968 | The White Game | Den vita sporten | [23] |
| 1968 | – | Hämta en cykel | |
| 1969 | – | Lördagen den 5.10 | |
| 1987 | Something Happened | Någonting har hänt | [24] |
| 1991 | World of Glory | Härlig är jorden | [25] |
| Years | Title | Ref. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1967–1972 | "List of commercials". Archived fromthe original on March 14, 2007. RetrievedMarch 29, 2005. | |||
| 1973–1980 | "List of commercials". Archived fromthe original on April 19, 2007. RetrievedMarch 29, 2005. | |||
| 1981–1990 | "List of commercials". Archived fromthe original on March 14, 2007. RetrievedMarch 29, 2005. | |||
| 1991– | "List of commercials". Archived fromthe original on March 14, 2007. RetrievedMarch 29, 2005. | |||
| Source:royandersson.com | ||||
| IMDb link | ||||
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