Persona (digital restoration)
An enigmatic Ingmar Bergman classic starring Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson as two women who swap identities in a cottage by the sea. Persona centers on a famous actress who breaks down during a performance of Electra. She abruptly stops acting—and even speaking. The crisis turns out to stem from her feelings of guilt toward her son: she feels unable to balance motherhood with her acting career. For her, the theater cannot replace real life.
Liv Ullmann plays an actress who falls into a deep crisis, is hospitalized, and stops speaking. Bibi Andersson plays the role of her nurse. Together, they set off for a secluded cottage by the water, where they get to know each other more and more intimately, to the extreme. Ingmar Bergman sketches a psychological portrait of these two women, who become entangled in a role reversal. Persona would become Bergman’s most successful film and one of the first to explicitly address female relationships and emotions—a theme that would become his trademark. Due to themes such as abortion and homosexuality, the film remained controversial for a long time. Persona has been the subject of countless analyses and interpretations by critics and scholars and is referred to as the “Mount Everest of film criticism.”
