Malmö's lonely shadow figures take us on a hypnotic journey into the fog, where intoxication is the main cure for darkness. In this hybrid between documentary and fever dream, we meet the cleaning lady who has worn out both her body and her dreams, the friends at the pub who are haggling over the next round and the man who, like a fallen hero, rambles along the streets of an empty town.
"It's simple! We do as we're told." This disconcerting reply comes from a Swedish employment office employee when asked how the country’s most unpopular government agency works. And that’s not all: in this creative documentary, case workers, receptionists and psychologists reveal how the Swedish employment system is failing. They complain about inadequate software and mystifying error messages, excessive caseloads and demoralizing results—on average, each case worker helps just 10 people find work each year, and only one in 10 clients will find a new job. To assure the anonymity of the interviewees, they're all represented by cardboard puppets. Thanks to visible puppeteers, expressive eyes and recognizable gestures, these puppets quickly take on the appearance of real people. The result is a fascinating, comical and artistic study of human strategies to get along in an irrational bureaucracy.
Eric, an ordinary man in his mid 30s with an ordinary job, wins a large sum of money playing the lottery. Despite his total lack of talent, he quits his job and sets off to learn how to play soccer. Eric firmly believes that if he spends 10,000 hours of training on what he sets his mind to, he can master just about anything.
