The trailer for Roy Andersson’s About Endlessness has arrived as the film enjoys its world premiere this week at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival. The Swedish auteur is no doubt hoping lightning strikes twice, as his last film, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, won Venice’s coveted Golden Lion for Best Film in 2014. Similar to his previous films, A Pigeon and Songs from the Second Floor, About Endlessness is a vignette-driven tragicomedy that ruminates on human life and the vulnerability of existence. The filmmaker has also shared some videos about the making of About Endlessness. You can find them below along with the trailer.

About Endlessness takes a page from “One Thousand and One Nights,” the famed collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folks tales. In the trailer, you find a Scheherazade-esque narrator guiding the viewer through a series of dream-like scenes. We find a priest that has lost his faith, a timid boy standing on a sidewalk, and an older couple admiring a cityscape. The vignettes are shot in what has become Andersson’s signature style, a gray tableau with an absence of shadows.

In the director’s statement, Andersson reveals that the cornucopia or horn of plenty was an inspiration for the film. “The horn of plenty is a mythological goat’s horn filled with items that signify wealth and abundance. It is usually depicted as overflowing with a profusion of produce and fruits of all kinds, a bounty that, as myth would have it, never dwindles, that is the very embodiment of infinite inexhaustibility,” he explains. He then goes on “The Greek myth inspired me to gather all these scenes, all these themes in the same film. I want to emphasize the beauty of being a human, of being alive; and in order to show that, you need to have a contrast, to also show the ugly side. This film is about the endlessness of the signs of existence.”

As for the behind-the-scenes footage, we see the filmmaker giddy as he watches the sets assembled in a studio. We also get a small window into the casting process.

Reviews for About Endlessness have started to trickle in, and the reception for the 76-minute picture has been positive. Variety called the film “short, bittersweet and exquisitely imagined,” and IndieWire referred to it as “Roy Andersson’s brief and brilliant vision of eternity.”

About Endlessness screens at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival next week. As of now, the film doesn’t have U.S. distribution. Let’s hope that changes soon.

About Endlessness from Roy Andersson on Vimeo.

About Endlessness from Roy Andersson on Vimeo.