Andersson was born in Gothenburg , Sweden in 1943 . A year after graduating from the Swedish Film Institute in 1969 , he directed his first feature-length film , '' A Swedish Love Story . '' The film , awarded four prizes the same year at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival , looked at the nature and nuance of young love and turned out to be a major critical and popular success for Andersson . Following this success , Andersson fell into a depression . As he did n't want to get stuck with the same style and expectations he cancelled what was going to be his next project , with the script half-way finished , and skipped a couple of other ideas for plots he had previously planned to realize . Eventually he directed the film '' Giliap '' which was released in 1975 . The film was a financial and critical disaster , went wildly over budget , and suffered lengthy delays in post-production . '' Giliap '' went in a decidedly different direction from '' A Swedish Love Story '' – replacing crowd-pleasing joy and soft humour with dark comedy and unforgiving deadpan . After '' Giliap '' , Andersson took a 25-year break from film directing , focusing his efforts mainly on his commercial work
20th Berlin International Film Festival
20th Berlin International Film Festival
Roy Andersson