A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Swedish: En duva
satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron) is a 2014 internationally
co-produced black comedy-drama film written and directed by Roy
Andersson. It is the third installment in his "Living" trilogy,
following Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007).
It premiered at the 71st Venice International Film Festival where it
was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Film. It was selected as the
Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy
Awards but it was not nominated.
Its title is a reference to the 1565 painting The Hunters in the Snow by
Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The painting depicts a rural wintertime
scene, with some birds perched on tree branches. Andersson said he
imagined that the birds in the scene are watching the people below and
wonder what they are doing. He explained the title of the film as a
"different way of saying 'what are we actually doing', that's what the
movie is about." At the Venice Film Festival, Andersson said that the
film had been inspired by the 1948 Italian film Bicycle Thieves by
Vittorio De Sica.
Plot
The movie consists of a series of mostly
self-contained tableaux, sometimes connected by recurring themes or
characters. The story loosely follows two traveling novelty salesmen,
Jonathan and Sam, who live in a desolate flophouse, and their
unsuccessful attempts to win customers for their joke articles (vampire
teeth, laughing bags and a monster mask). Although there is no main
storyline in the traditional sense, all scenes are connected.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pigeon_Sat_on_a_Branch_Reflecting_on_Existence