Giants and The Morning After

At the beginning of time, giants created the mountains and deep forests that surround the small town of Ydre – a Swedish answer to Twin Peaks. Sweden's smallest municipality is surrounded by lakes, fog and towering spruce trees, and has a population of just a few thousands which is carefully monitored by the town's friendly and idealistic mayor. Depopulation and the many problems of the great outside world are becoming an increasingly present threat, so the mayor is ready with gifts and big smiles every time a child is born and he can carefully note that Ydre has a new inhabitant. In the meantime, youths and elderly people are working and living their lives. The distance between country and city may be getting bigger, but the EU-regulated milk prices and the refugee crisis still make it all the way to the fringes, where a busload of African immigrants are welcomed by the ageing mayor with the same warmth as a newborn baby. Creation myths, fables and everyday realism are mixed with understated comedy in an atmospheric and almost miraculously ubiquitous fresco of a film. Evocative and elegant.