Songs from the Second Floor

One evening, somewhere in our hemisphere, a strange series of events take place: a clerk is made redundant in a degrading manner, an immigrant is violently attacked in the street, and a magician makes a disastrous mess of his act. In the midst of this mayhem, one person stands out: it is Karl, and his face is covered in ashes. He has just put a match to his furniture store, to get the insurance money. No one gets a wink of sleep that night.

The next day, the signs of pending chaos are starting to be felt as the madness grips a board of directors, and the city itself is paralysed by a horrendous traffic jam. While everyone is losing it at the beginning of the millennium, Karl is gradually becoming conscious of the absurdity of the world and realises just how difficult it is to be human.

From March 1996 to the spring of 2000, Roy Andersson worked on Songs from the Second Floor. The film won the Grand Prix du Jury at the Cannes film festival.