Rob Munday

Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale Shorts in 2010, Ruben Östlund’s mesmerizing story of a failed bank robbery is based on a real-life incident witnessed by the film’s director and his producer (Erik Hemmendorff) in Stockholm. A single-take short with over 96 performers orchestrating events in front of the camera, Incident by a Bank is a fascinating exercise in real-time storytelling that’s brimming with drama, tension and comedy.

“Reality seemed absurd and incongruous. Unreal”

With his preconceptions of a how a bank robbery would play-out largely formed through scenes he’d experienced in cinema or television, Östlund’s idea of what such a hold-up should look like turned out to be nothing like the real-life event he witnessed. “These embedded images had become a point of reference that had very little correlation to the actual events I observed taking place across the street”, he says in a Director’s Statement. “Reality seemed absurd and incongruous. Unreal. The film Incident by a Bank evolved out of my own perception of the robbery attempt. The fact that it is based on my perceptions is a cornerstone of my work. The way I see it, the majority of films that include situations like this are based on other, cinematic, references”.

Shot as one stationary wide-shot and then made more dynamic in post-production by editing scenes from the high-resolution image, Östlund and his team were able to take one eight-minute long sequence and turn it into a ten minute short (12-mins if you include titles). This unusual approach from the director results in his film maintaining a certain level of authenticity to its story, whilst also preserving the real-time feel of his short

Since completing Incident by a Bank Östlund has gone on to create three award-winning feature films – his latest The Square picking up the Palme d’Or at this years’ Cannes