A series of sometimes hilarious, other times heartbreaking vignettes, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence isn’t just one of the best movie titles ever; it’s also a study on life, death, empathy, and class. Uniting these tableaux stories are Sam and Jonathan, two bumbling salesmen peddling joke shop novelties; the Don Quixote and Sancho Panz or Vladimir and Estragon of this absurd comedy as it wanders from moments of serene beauty to bitter cruelty and all the little tragedies in-between.

Grim, funny, surreal, sweet, dreamlike and painterly all at once, this third instalment in Swedish auteur director Roy Andersson’s existential trilogy (after Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007)) is perhaps the darkest of the bunch, yet it also features some of the most blissful moments of the series. In this dioramic survey of human existence, Andersson leans further on his Beckettian influence and deeper into abstraction; facing humanity’s (particularly Europe’s) capacity for evil, the strange symptoms of nationalism and the pettiness instilled by capitalism, contrasting them with the sublime and the moments worth living for. This one even took home the Golden Lion at Venice and was selected as the Swedish entry for the 2016 Academy Awards.