The Swedish director was handed out on Saturday the Silver Lion-Best Director award in Venice for About Endlessness, five years after receiving the Golden Lion.

The film about the beauty and frailty of existence received positive reviews across the board, with The Guardian’s Xan Brooks calling it “a divine comedy with moments of devilish wit”, or Variety’s Guy Lodge praising it as a “short, bittersweet and exquisitely imagined” film.

Andersson said: “Coming back to Venice to show this film has been a great honour and to receive this award is an acknowledgment that we have created a film that connects to people. It gives me great joy and inspires me to keep on working.” 

READ OUR EVE OF-VENICE INTERVIEW WITH ROY ANDERSSON: CLICK HERE

About Endlessness was produced by Pernilla Sandström and Johan Carlsson of Roy Andersson Filmproduktion, in co-production with 4 ½ Fiksjon, Essential Films/Parisienne de Production, with support among others from Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

Foreign territories that have acquired the film from Coproduction Office include Germany (Neue Visionen), Greece (Ama Films), ex-Yugoslavia ( Demiurg), Hungary (Vertigo Media) and Turkey (Filmarti). Several other deals are being negotiated.

About Endlessness will next screen on Wednesday at Toronto’s Masters Programme.

TriArt will release it domestically on November 15, 2019.

This year’s Venice Golden Lion winner was Todd Phillip’s Joker, while Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy took the Grand Jury Prize. This year’s Venice main competition jury was headed by Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel.