Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words

Ingrid Bergman lost both parents young, and her relationship with the camera came almost out of that absence. She kept diaries all her life, wrote letters, and filmed her own life on 8mm and 16mm. Stig Björkman's documentary puts that material at the center, and the film's voice is Bergman's own sentences. The idea came from Isabella Rossellini, who suggested Björkman make a film about her mother. That opened the family archive. In the Swedish version, Alicia Vikander reads Bergman's writing. The documentary is not a career summary but the story of a choice: Bergman repeatedly left her family to follow her work, and her children paid for it too. The film neither excuses nor prosecutes this. It sets the record in front of you. It screened in the Cannes Classics section at Cannes in 2015 and received a special mention for the L'Oeil d'or. Who it's for: Anyone interested in film history, actor biographies, and documentaries built from archival material. Who it's not for: The account stays inside Bergman's own view, and there is little critical distance or objection from the people around her.