PERSONA
This landmark film, startling and provocative in its ideas, stands out as the pinnacle of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's career. Nurse Alma’s (Bibi Andersson) cheery efforts to communicate with actress Elisabet Volger (Liv Ullmann), mute and semi-catatonic after an onstage nervous breakdown, give way to deeply personal confessions. Andersson's riveting monologue of a long-ago sexual encounter ("one of the rare, truly erotic sequences in movie history," according to film critic Pauline Kael) leads to an even more intense transaction between her and the watchful actress as the exact nature of their ambiguous relationship comes into question. Though the queer subtext of Bergman’s masterpiece has long been the subject of debate, for writer and queer activist Sarah Schulman “the first important lesbian images in cinema for me were: Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson in Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA, particularly the moment where their intensity of feeling burned up the celluloid.” DIR/SCR/PROD Ingmar Bergman. Sweden, 1966, b&w, 83 min. In Swedish with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Co-presented with the Embassy of Sweden.
Run Time: 83 Minutes
Opening Date: Friday, June 13, 2025
Genre: Thriller, drama