2018: 100th anniversary of his birth July 14th 1918

The only director to have been awarded the Palme des Palmes at Cannes, Ingmar Bergman can be seen as the uncontested master of “cinéma d’auteur”. Tarantino, Woody Allen or Michael Haneke regard the director as the absolute film-maker, whose life and work have no equivalent. Ten years after his death, as we prepare to celebrate the centenary of his birth, this film recounts a single year in Bergman’s life. A pivotal year, a crazy year, in which he would die, and then be reborn thanks to his passion for cinema, and one film: Persona.

The director
MANUELLE BLANC, after working at the Délégation du Droit des femmes, turned to documentaries, first in production, then as a director. She has notably made film portraits (Philippe Genty, Sophie Perez, Olivier Cadiot, Romane Borhinger, Michel Schweizer, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Neville Tranter or the Handspring puppet company…) and cultural films, including Women painters, four centuries of struggle, in 2014 for Arte and Through women’s lenses with Julie Martinovic in 2015 for France 5, two reflections on women in art history, be it painting or photography. Manuelle Blanc has also made a documentary on the work processes of Krzysztof Warlikowski, which follows the various stages in the majestic creation of (A)pollonia, and is a pertinent introduction to the work and unique character of the Polish theatre director.

The writer
MARIA SJÖBERG is an author and translator, notably of films, and lives in France and Sweden. For ten years, she worked at the Cannes festival in collaboration with Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux for the selection of Scandinavian films, and represented Cannes at numerous festivals. She has also created an association, Cine Nordica, which works on the cultural rapprochement between France and Sweden, and organises a festival in Paris. In 2013, she wrote a documentary for the collection  Writters of Europe (produced by Camera Lucida) and obtained one of the last major interviews with Henning Mankell. Maria Sjöberg has obtained a preliminary agreement concerning this project with the Bergman Foundation, which administers the director’s affairs and legacy.

Producer: Camera Lucida Productions (Sylvie Gautier, François Bertrand)
French broadcaster: Arte France
International sales: CPB International