The Burden (in Swedish: Min börda) is a 14 minute swedish independent short film, directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr. The plot admittedly, is a little out there… “A dark musical enacted in a modern market place, situated next to a large freeway. The employees of the various commercial venues deal with boredom and existential anxiety by performing cheerful musical turns. The apocalypse is a tempting liberator.” but let that be the reason and not a deterrent to seeing this incredibly well-done film. I respect how open Lindroth von Bahr is when discussing the film, about how she sees herself the cast of animals, working dead-end jobs and and struggling with the banality of their existence. And I seriously respect that Lindroth von Bahr basically spent two years working full-time and not getting paid in order to invest as much of the 75,000 euro budget she was provided (largely by the Swedish Film Institute) into the film and create the piece she envisioned. Even then she felt she was compromising, “It would have been nice to make the dance numbers larger. [Busby Berkeley] always made these dance scenes with 30 people making different patterns in their dancing, and it’s really surreal and crazy,” says the director. “I kind of wanted that for this film, but I couldn’t really do it because we didn’t have the space or the time to make that many puppets.”