The Swedish director of A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Roy Andersson has always been a distinctive voice in European cinema. 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. In advance of the release of his most recent film, the Venice Silver Lion-winning About Endlessness, this terrific, unexpectedly moving documentary portrait captures the man at work. And the themes that are wryly addressed in his films – existential dread, fear of failure, death, doom – loom all too large in real life for the 77-year-old, whose battle with alcoholism increasingly takes centre stage.
