Carl-Johan Åkerstedt

The turn of a year in a snowy village in Sweden documents the need for change and continuance. A collective film about rites and times. Dala-Floda, Sweden, has 680 inhabitants. In the depths of the blue light of winter, six filmmakers ask themselves what it means to start a new year. Emerging locals formulate their views on time and our need for rituals and reoccurring events. Their answers parade poetically through the snowy and cold village landscape. A sort of time travel takes place and recalls ordinary as well as extraordinary memories and identities. The commonplace is our need for measuring time, our need for a beginning and an end. A ninety-year-old woman shows a way out of the never-ending dream phase of the evoked Phantom Carriage (Selma Lagerlöf) and exclaims: "Really, you ought to reset yourself. You have to feel completely at zero again".