Kirill Serebrennikov

For me director Roy Andersson is one of the important living geniuses. An artist, who like all authors, represents his own visions on the screen and does so without compromise. He first worked for advertisement, winning numerous awards, then came to cinema and revealed his world of sorrow, humor, sarcasm and misanthropy.

These themes impregnate every Andersson film, making us experience very contrary emotions. In anycase, telling the stories of Andersson’s films, or even asking the question, “what are his films about?”, is totally useless. Even though I’d answer this: All Andersson films speak of the apocalypse. It might be local, scanty, sometimes funny, sometimes dark, but they’re always about the apocalypse.

The movie You, the living, that will be shown at the festival, is for me a stylistic gem from the director. It’s important to understand that all the places and objects in the film are artificial things made by hand. These apartments, streets, underpasses, alleys and landscapes don’t exist in nature, that whole universe is created in Andersson’s studio. It’s old school cinema, warmhearted, slow paced, but also radical and in tune with the times, created by a former advertiser with the heart of a great poet.