Fanny and Alexander

“A big, dark, beautiful, generous family chronicle, which touches on many of the themes from earlier films while introducing something that, in Bergman, might pass for serenity.”
—Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“The work of an artist resigned to life's mystery, full of wonder at the passage of time, full of forgiveness for past wrongs, and full of understanding.”
—Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Selected by Mitchell Kaplan

Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander as his swan song, and it is the legendary director’s warmest and most autobiographical film, a four-time Academy Award–winning triumph that combines his trademark melancholy and emotional intensity with immense joy and sensuality.

No name is more synonymous with the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema than Ingmar Bergman, a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. In a career that spanned six decades, Bergman directed dozens of films in an astonishing array of tones, ranging from comedies whose lightness and complexity belie their brooding hearts to groundbreaking formal experiments and excruciatingly intimate explorations of family relationships.

Check out the rest of our Movies We Love! Selected by Steven Krams & Mitchell Kaplan program!