Vintersaga

Two young girls on mopeds wonder what five percent of infinity is. Two men drink beer in a bar. They haven’t seen each other for thirty years; one of them apologizes to the other for bullying him back at school. Well-heeled seniors sing the Swedish royal anthem with enthusiasm. The camera always keeps its distance, capturing these moments in long shots. But the mood of the locations always finds its way into the twenty-four carefully composed stanzas. These scenes are held together by an all-encompassing melancholy and a subtle humour. Ladies on the street fill each other in on who died last week. A car drives in circle in front of a factory until its wheels begin to smoke. These absurd, laconic slices of life are anchored in the palpable reality of Sweden’s long, dark winter months.