Swedish cinema is defined above all by Ingmar Bergman, whose psychological rigour and stark imagery set a benchmark world cinema is still measuring itself against. Persona is perhaps the purest distillation of what made him so singular. Ruben Östlund later carried the Swedish flag to Cannes with Triangle of Sadness, proving the country's taste for unsettling, idea-driven filmmaking endures.
Country Sweden
There is a particular kind of magic to stop motion when it is done with real care, and Please, Anna Mantzaris's latest short film, has it in abundance. I came to it through the BFI London Film Festival knowing her earlier work, the gloriously deadpan But Milk Is
Rating: 3.5★
There is a slightly awkward truth I have had to make my peace with after working my way through a fair chunk of Ingmar Bergman's filmography: I keep coming away respecting these films rather than loving them. I admire them. I think about them afterwards. And then I
Rating: 4.0★
Fairy tales have always had a cruel streak. Not the Disney kind, with the swelling strings and the guaranteed happy ending, but the older kind, the kind where girls slice off their own toes to fit a glass slipper and pigeons peck out the eyes of the wicked. The Ugly
Rating: 3.5★
You don't just watch Midsommar. You get bludgeoned by it. From the very first frames, Ari Aster is coming for your senses with a relentless, sun-drenched assault that refuses to let you look away, even when every instinct is telling you to. And it starts with something
Rating: 3.0★
There's a moment early in And Then We Danced where a veteran instructor tells the young dancers that traditional Georgian dance contains no love, no sensuality, no individual feeling. It should be rigid, precise, masculine. And you immediately understand the trap that the film is setting, because everything
Rating: 4.0★
Some documentaries inform you. The best ones change you. Jaha's Promise belongs firmly in that second category. I came away from it heartbroken, furious, and genuinely inspired, sometimes all three at once, and that emotional complexity is exactly what separates a truly vital piece of documentary filmmaking from
Rating: 2.5★
There's a moment early in Winter Light when Bergman simply lets his camera sit in a Swedish church and watch a Sunday service play out, nearly in full, in real time. No cuts to spare you, no intercutting to build tension, just the sermon, the sparse congregation, the
Genre Drama
★★★ — Persona (1966)
Genre Drama
★ — Only God Forgives (2013)
Genre Drama
★★★ — The Match Factory Girl (1990)
Genre Drama
★★ — Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013)
Genre Drama
★★½ — Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013)
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