A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

Two travelling novelty-goods salesmen, Sam and Jonathan, drift through a series of loosely linked episodes, peddling vampire fangs, joke masks and other party tricks to people who rarely want them. The pair bicker over how to present their wares, short of money and low on luck, while around them ordinary life keeps turning strange: everyday scenes open onto cruelty, humiliation, fantasy and sudden death. Across roughly thirty-nine sketches the film moves between deadpan comedy and something much darker, considering how people treat one another over a long stretch of history.

Roy Andersson wrote and directed the film, the third entry in the loose trilogy that followed Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living, and came before About Endlessness. Holger Andersson plays Jonathan and Nisse Vestblom plays Sam; the credited cast runs to twenty-seven performers, among them Viktor Gyllenberg, Lotti Törnros, Jonas Gerholm, Ola Stensson. It was a co-production involving Swedish, German, Danish, Norwegian and French partners, and it took about 1 million USD worldwide.

On IMDb the film holds 6.9/10 from 20,647 votes, and on TMDB 6.9/10 from 508 votes, while critics rated it 7.9/10 from 100 reviews, clearly higher than audiences did.