"It's simple! We do as we're told." This disconcerting reply comes from a Swedish employment office employee when asked how the country’s most unpopular government agency works. And that’s not all: in this creative documentary, case workers, receptionists and psychologists reveal how the Swedish employment system is failing. They complain about inadequate software and mystifying error messages, excessive caseloads and demoralizing results—on average, each case worker helps just 10 people find work each year, and only one in 10 clients will find a new job. To assure the anonymity of the interviewees, they're all represented by cardboard puppets. Thanks to visible puppeteers, expressive eyes and recognizable gestures, these puppets quickly take on the appearance of real people. The result is a fascinating, comical and artistic study of human strategies to get along in an irrational bureaucracy.

På Arbetsförmedlingen tycks tjänstemännens uppgift inte längre vara att förmedla jobb, utan snarare att lyda order och verkställa beslut. Denna dock-dokumentär, baserad på Roland Paulsens omtalade bok med samma titel, tar oss med in i byråkratins absurda vardag. Filmen vann pris som bästa kortdokumentär på IDFA 2017. Filmen är också Guldbaggenominerad för bästa kortfilm.