Ingmar Bergman

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born on July 14, 1918, in Uppsala, the son of a strict Lutheran royal chaplain. Immersing himself in theatre at Stockholm University, he became director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) and municipal theatres across Sweden.

Over a six-decade career, Bergman directed over sixty films and three hundred stage plays, probing the silence of God, mortality, marital anguish, and the human subconscious. His 1957 masterpieces The Seventh Seal (with its iconic knight playing chess with Death) and Wild Strawberries catapulted Swedish cinema into global arthouse prominence. Works like Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972), and his 1982 four-time Oscar-winning masterpiece Fanny and Alexander established him as the supreme cinematic explorer of the human condition.