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"Here comes my family." The BFI in the UK has revealed a new trailer for the 40th anniversary re-release of the acclaimed 1982 Ingmar Bergman film Fanny and Alexander, a Christmas classic from Sweden. The three-hour long saga of family and humanity first opened in Sweden in 1982, before arriving in US theaters in 1983. Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies & tragedies of their lively and affectionate family, the Ekdahls. "Although Bergman is as attuned as ever to the anguish of life, there is also much that is fondly recalled, from toy theatres and magic lantern shows to family Christmases and favoured relatives." Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander to be his final film before retiring, and his script is semi-autobiographical. It won four Academy Awards when it first opened. The film stars Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Jan Malmsjö, Börje Ahlstedt, Anna Bergman, Gunn Wållgren, Erland Josephson, Mats Bergman,...

Following last summer’s restoration of Swedish auteur Jan Troell’s directorial debut Here is Your Life (1966), Criterion presents the director’s most notable accomplishment from his most prolific period, the one-two punch of The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972). Though technically released as two distinct features, they are more of a conjoined saga detailing the travails of America’s Scandinavian ancestors. Richly attenuated, they’re adapted from the celebrated series of four novels by Vilhelm Moberg, Upon a Good Land, hailed as cornerstones of Swedish literature. Until now, these, along with most of Troell’s 1970s titles, (who is known best for his 2008 masterpiece, Everlasting Moments) have been largely unavailable, a pity considering the level of achievement and a handful of Academy Award nominations (including a Best Picture nod) between both features. It’s difficult to imagine a more authentic depiction of the early immigration experience, narratives which have...

Swedish actor known for his roles in Ingmar Bergman's films and television dramas

Although the actors who comprised Ingmar Bergman's repertory company all went on to make their own prestigious careers, they will for ever be associated with the great Swedish film and stage director. Erland Josephson, who has died aged 88 after suffering from Parkinson's disease, was artistically linked with Bergman even more than Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. Josephson appeared in more than a dozen of Bergman's films, and played a Bergman surrogate in Ullmann's Faithless (2000).

In middle and old age, he was chosen by directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos for the qualities he revealed in the Bergman films – a certain self-centred introspection and a deep melancholy, etched on his lined and grizzled features. Because he became a leading film actor in his 50s, he seems never to have been young.