The Garbage Helicopter

The Garbage Helicopter (or Sophelikoptern), filmed entirely in black-and-white, is the debut feature from Swedish director Jonas Selberg Augustsén. Three Swedish siblings set off across the country to return a grandfather-clock to their grandmother. Along the way they encounter bizarre landmarks, races, the police and thieves, but it’s not just a stereotypical road-trip film.

The Garbage Helicopter has an abstract tone to it. The audience don’t really get to know the characters: it’s all shot in black and white and the general editing of the piece makes each scene seem like an entirely new film. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s interesting to see a change in the typical story that comes with the road-trip genre – but it does make it difficult to engage.

The dialogue (or lack of it) gives nothing away, which is at once intriguing and alienating, leaving very little motivation to continue watching past the first 15 minutes. There’s very little character development or establishment of a relationship between the three main characters, aside from outbursts of dialogue mainly from one character exclaiming his strong desire to become a poet

Moments of unexpected dry humour catch viewers off guard and induce chuckling. It’s the kind of comedy that only those with a dry sense of humour understand and it can just come off as awkward commentary. That being said, certain points are so surreal and bizarre, it’s hard to not laugh.

Some will enjoy The Garbage Helicopter in all of it’s surreal glory and others will lose interest quickly due to the obscure set-up.

Becky Henrys

The Garbage Helicopter does not have a UK release date yet. It is part of the Laugh competition in the 59^th London Film Festival.

For further information about the 59^th London Film Festival visit here, and for more of our coverage visit here.