Erik Viklund

"It's time to be alone" says a young woman.

A son loses his father because of alcoholism. The people in a mining town in northernmost Sweden see their community slowly disappear into a hole, little by little. These two situations beyond control create pain and anguish; however, is it possible to compare an act of personal mourning with collective suffering? This is the question that filmmaker and narrator Gustav Hillbom seeks to answer, returning to his native town of Malmberget gathering information about its gradual dismantling.

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".