Mostra Internazionale d Arte Cinematografica Venice

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE by Roy Andersson will celebrate its world premiere in Competition at the 71^st Venice International Film Festival on September 2^nd. The film is thus nominated for the Golden Lion. A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE is the third film of Roy Andersson's THE LIVING TRILOGY. It follows SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR which premiered in Competition at Cannes in 2000 where it was awarded with the Special Jury Prize, and YOU, THE LIVING which premiered in Un Certain Regard in 2007. Roy Andersson dedicated the last 19 years to THE LIVING TRILOGY.

Synopsis: Like modern times’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Sam and Jonathan, two travelling salesmen peddling novelty items, take us on a kaleidoscopic wandering through human destinies. A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE consists of everyday and out of the ordinary stories portraying our existence in its grandeur and pettiness, beauty and tragedy, exaggeration and sadness... – with a panoramic view, as if told by a bird reflecting on human condition. The pigeon is astonished by humans, their activities, follies, prides and all this agitation, the meaning of which it seeks to understand. THE LIVING TRILOGY, of which A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE is the third film, creates a tension between the banal and the essential, the comic and the tragic – to show the dialectic and dynamic nature of existence, while shaping the thought that mankind is potentially heading towards apocalypse, but also that the outcome is in our hands.

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE is a coproduction of Roy Andersson Filmproduktion AB (Stockholm) with 4 ½ Fiksjon AS (Oslo), Essential (Berlin), Parisienne (Paris) and was produced in collaboration with Sveriges Television AB, Arte France Cinéma and ZDF/Arte. The film was supported by Svenska Filminstitutet, Eurimages Council of Europe, Nordisk Film- och TV Fond, Norska Filmfonden, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée. International sales are handled by Coproduction Office.

International press is handled by mm filmpresse. Press material can be downloaded from www.mm-filmpresse.de.

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE

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A film by Roy Andersson

Sweden/Norway/France/Germany 2014, 100 minutes

Roy Andersson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1943. His first feature, A SWEDISH LOVE STORY, won four main awards at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1970. GILIAP, his second film, was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 1976. In 1975 he started directing commercials that received an outstanding international recognition and won him a total of eight Golden Lions – while gradually bringing his unique cinematic aesthetic based on sequence shots, and using non-actors in studio shooting to perfection. SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR, the first film of THE LIVING TRILOGY, was Roy Andersson's first feature film after 24 years. The film premiered in Competition at Cannes in 2000 where it was awarded with the Special Jury Prize. YOU, THE LIVING (Un Certain Regard 2007) and A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE (Venice Competition 2014) complete the trilogy.