SYNOPSIS:

Welcome to the first-ever Doc Walks International! Keith treks to Sweden, to the tiny Baltic island of Fårö, where INGMAR BERGMAN built his creative base. Keith’s there shooting for his new documentary, BERGMAN IN DALLAS, about the filmmaker’s forgotten 1981 visit to Texas — enjoying an artist’s residency at the Bergman Estate. And this journey into the world of Ingmar Bergman brought Keith to this week’s guest, Jannike Åhlund, founder of  the Bergman Week festival and chairperson of the Bergman Center, a cultural space and museum here on Fårö.

Jannike reflects on time spent with Bergman, going back to her days as a film critic and editor at the Swedish Film Institute’s CHAPLIN magazine. And she’s got the stories: the convenience-store pitch that birthed Bergman Week, the actual AI chatbot version of Bergman she’s had to sit across from, and why “chasing the truth” through Bergman’s autobiography is a fool's errand. We dig deep into the making of PERSONA — pitched in a single sentence — plus, why WILD STRAWBERRIES might be his most perfect film, and how the mother/daughter conflict of AUTUMN SONATA hits Jannike hardest, personally. And she lays out why Bergman had almost no direct disciples. 

Jannike also opens up about co-directing CITIZEN SCHEIN, her own documentary about Harry Schein, the Holocaust survivor who basically invented Swedish film funding and made Bergman’s career a possibility.

This episode doubles as a deep dive bit of research for Keith and his doc, and a peek into the life of a cinematic legend; it’s a different sort of Doc Walk, and we think you’re gonna dig it.

Along the way: Ruben Östlund’s double Palme d’Or run (TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, THE SQUARE); shoutouts to filmmakers Bo Widerberg, Jan Troell, Lars von Trier, and Joachim Trier; and Jannike’s gateway film (hint: it’s French, black-and-white, and involves 400 of something). Plus: windmills, thatched-roof hovels, and Swedish sheep. 

Next time, we’re back stateside with Andrew and Melissa Shea, the husband-and-wife team behind FLAG DAY, a verité portrait of small-town Michigan’s biggest party.

DISCUSSION LINKS

SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955) | THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) | WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957) | THE 400 BLOWS (1959) | THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961) | PERSONA (1966) | THE PASSION OF ANNA (1969) | FÅRÖ DOCUMENT (1970) | AUTUMN SONATA (1978) | FÅRÖ DOCUMENT 1979 (1979) | FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982) | FORCE MAJEURE (2014) | CITIZEN SCHEIN (2017) | THE SQUARE (2017) | TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (2022) | FLAG DAY (2026) | BERGMAN IN DALLAS (TBD)

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Welcome to Fårö — Doc Walks goes international
01:47 Arriving at the Bergman Center with Jannike Åhlund
02:19 Founding the Bergman Center as an offshoot of Göteborg
02:54 From film critic at Chaplin magazine to meeting Bergman
05:01 How Bergman Week began (the convenience-store pitch)
07:37 Bergman’s abandoned plan for a film city on Fårö
09:37 The tax scandal and Bergman’s self-imposed exile
10:10 Bergman as an autobiographical filmmaker
11:22 Laterna Magica and the “AI Bergman” chatbot
17:17 PERSONA: reinventing himself as an artist
19:49 Scouting Fårö for THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
20:26 What Fårö is really like (500 people, then 10,000)
22:54 FÅRÖ DOCUMENT, FÅRÖ DOCUMENT 1979, and the island’s politics
23:38 Funding Bergman: the Swedish Film Institute and Harry Schein
33:20 Harry Schein, Ingrid Thulin, and CITIZEN SCHEIN
35:33 Co-directing a documentary after a career of criticism
38:07 The gateway drug: THE 400 BLOWS
41:05 Bergman and the French New Wave
42:19 Swedish filmmakers Americans should know (Ruben Östlund and more)
43:32 What to take away from Bergman’s career
44:41 Advice for emerging filmmakers
46:29 Teaser: FLAG DAY with Andrew and Melissa Shea