01/09/2015 - Also nominated for the EFA’s People’s Choice Award, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is Sweden’s candidate for Best Foreign-language Film

Swedish director Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roy Andersson
film profile], which last year collected the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, will be Sweden’s official submission for the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-language Film.

At a press conference today (1 September) at the Swedish Film Institute in Stockholm, the seven-member Swedish Oscar committee announced that “the perfectionist Andersson’s first feature-length film in seven years” would join the Oscars race for Sweden.

The film, which is also nominated for the European Film Academy’s People’s Choice Award (see the news), set to be presented on 12 December in Berlin, is Andersson’s fourth contender for the Oscar nomination, after A Swedish Love Story (1970), Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pernilla Sandström
interview: Roy Andersson
film profile] (2007).

“Andersson is one of Swedish film’s most important directors of all time. A Swedish Love Story set a new standard in psychological realism, subtle tragicomedy and strong visual narrative – something that has characterised his work ever since, particularly in Songs from the Second Floor,” explained the committee. 

Scripted by Andersson, and taking its title from a detail in Dutch artist Pieter Brueghel’s 1565 painting Hunters in the Snow (a pigeon overlooking a snowy landscape crowded with people), the film focuses on two men: a travelling salesman and his friend, who is slightly mentally disturbed. The salesman proceeds to explain why society is how it is.

The €4.5 million production was staged by Pernilla Sandström for Roy Andersson Filmproduktion, with France’s Societé Parisienne de Production, Norway’s 4½ Fiksjon and Germany’s Essential Filmproduktion. It is represented internationally by Paris-based sales agent Coproduction Office.