Midsommar Stories is an episodic film where “IKEA, myth of our time, is the linchpin for a series of different stories created by students in the department ‘Dramatic theory and script development’ of the University for Film and Television in Munich. Under the guidance of the German director Doris Dörrie the five best stories were developed.”
Here we present edited fragments of two of the stories: Sabotage by Andi Niessner and Markus Krämer, and Himmelbett (The Empty Bed) by Elena Alvarez.
In the first short movie—Sabotage—we see Jacqueline as a worker in a factory in East Germany that produces furniture to be sold in West Germany IKEAs. After the reunification, helping a young man assembling one of the pieces she was working with, she becomes victim of one of her—deliberated—mistakes.
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In the musical short Himmelbett (The Empty Bed), Lene wants to buy a new bed after a break up, so Peter and his girlfriend take her to IKEA.
Girlfriend — Why are we going to IKEA?
Peter — When people split up, they go to IKEA.
GF — I thought when you move in with somebody.
P — No, then you’d have everything double. When you split up, there is nothing left, so you buy everything new. IKEA is the land of new beginnings. New furniture… new life.
In the movie, in addition to the bed department, we also get to see the distribution and storage corridors, one of the distinctive characteristics of IKEA shops, as a set for dancing forklifts.
