Janus Films
Series
Language
Swedish
Description
In medieval Sweden a knight returns from war only to find a ravaged homeland. He meets up with a group of traveling players and eventually confronts the embodiment of death with whom he engages in a game of chess for his life. The knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.
Series
Criterion collection volume 139
Language
Swedish
Description
A distinguished professor emeritus who lives alone with his housekeeper can only come to terms with his egocentricity by traveling back in time to his earliest youth, finding there the seeds of his failure as husband, lover, father. This film deals with the phenomena of old age wherein childhood memories return with ever-increasing clarity while great stretches of the prime of life vanish into obscurity. In Swedish with English subtitles.
Series
Criterion collection volume 71
Language
Swedish
Description
An opera by Mozart, in which a handsome young man is enlisted to rescue the Queen of Night's daughter from an evil sorcerer.
Series
Criterion collection volume 321
Language
Swedish
Description
A peasant girl is raped and murdered in 14th century Sweden. When her killers seek shelter in her father's house, he kills them to avenge her death. Soon a spring appears from where the girl was killed and her father sees this as a sign from above.
Series
Criterion collection volume 60
Language
Swedish
Description
After having neglected her children for many years, world famous pianist Charlotte visits her daughter Eva in her home. To her surprise she finds her other daughter, Helena, there as well. Helena is mentally disabled, and Eva has taken Helena out of the institution where their mother had placed her. The tension between Charlotte and Eva only builds up slowly, until a nightly conversation releases all the things they have wanted to tell each other....
Series
Criterion collection volume 261 (262-264)
Language
Swedish
Description
Told through the eyes of Alexander and his sister Fanny, we see the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century. Their parents, Oscar and Emilie, are the director and the leading lady of the local theatre company. Oscar's mother and brother are its chief patrons. After Oscar's early death, his widow marries the bishop and moves with her children to his austere and forbidding chancery. The children are immediately...
Series
Criterion collection volume 614
Language
Swedish
Description
Seventeen-year-old Monika and nineteen-year-old Harry Lund meet in a cafe. They spend a happy summer together, and soon Monika discovers that she is pregnant. They marry, but Monika is bored with taking care of the baby and the responsibilities of married life. She begins an affair with a former lover and their marriage falls apart.
Series
Criterion collection volume 614
Language
Swedish
Description
Seventeen-year-old Monika and nineteen-year-old Harry Lund meet in a café. They spend a happy summer together, and soon Monika discovers that she is pregnant. They marry, but Monika is bored with taking care of the baby and the responsibilities of married life. She begins an affair with a former lover and their marriage falls apart.
Series
Criterion collection volume 766
Language
Swedish
Description
This mesmerizing debut by the great Swedish director Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land) is an epic bildungsroman and a multilayered representation of early twentieth-century Sweden. Based on a series of semi-autobiographical novels by Nobel Prize winner Eyvind Johnson, Here Is Your Life follows a working-class boy's development, from naive teenager to intellectually curious young adult, from logger to movie projectionist to politically engaged...
Series
Criterion collection volume 101
Language
Swedish
Description
A story of four women's search for spiritual peace. Agnes is dying of cancer and is visited one last time by her two sisters, Karin and Maria. These two become entangled in feelings of jealousy, manipulation and selfishness. Yet Agnes is able to transcend her sisters' pettiness to remember moments of staggering beauty as well as horror.
Series
Criterion collection volume 537
Language
Swedish
Description
A traveling magician bringing his potions and mystical items with him is challenged by the Minister of Health, who believes the magician to be a charlatan. Bonus features include an interview with the director regarding the film and various essays.
Series
Criterion collection volume 766
Language
Swedish
Description
Based on a series of semi-autobiographical novels by Nobel Prize winner Eyvind Johnson, it follows a working-class boy's development, from naive teenager to intellectually curious young adult, from logger to movie projectionist to politically engaged man of the people, all set against the backdrop of a slowly industrializing rural landscape. With its mix of modernist visual ingenuity and elegantly structured storytelling.
14) Höstsonaten
Series
Criterion collection volume 60
Language
Swedish
Description
After having neglected her children for many years, world famous pianist Charlotte visits her daughter Eva in her home. To her surprise she finds her other daughter, Helena, there as well. Helena is mentally disabled, and Eva has taken Helena out of the institution where their mother had placed her. The tension between Charlotte and Eva only builds up slowly, until a nightly conversation releases all the things they have wanted to tell each other....
15) Kris =: Crisis
Language
Swedish
Description
Urban beauty-shop proprietress Mrs. Jenny arrives in an idyllic rural town one morning to whisk away her 18-year-old daughter, Nelly, whom she abandoned as a child, from the loving woman who raised her. Once in Stockholm, Nelly soon receives a crash course in adult corruption and wrenching heartbreak.
16) Törst =: Thirst
Language
Swedish
Description
A couple traveling across war-ravaged Europe. A disintegrating marriage. A ballet dancer's scarred past. Elliptically told in flashbacks and multiple narrative threads, this film shows people enslaved to memory and united in isolation.
Language
Swedish
Description
An orchestra violinist's dreams of becoming a celebrated soloist and fears of his own mediocrity get in the way of his marriage to the patient, caring Marta. Played out to the music of Beethoven, this film is a heartbreaking tale of one man's inability to overcome the demons standing in the way of his happiness.
Language
Swedish
Description
Berit, a suicidal young woman living in a working-class port town, unexpectedly falls for Gösta, a sailor on leave. Haunted by a troubled past and held in a vice grip by her domineering mother, Berit begins to hope that her relationship with Gösta might save her from self-destruction.
Series
Criterion collection volume 613
Language
Swedish
Description
Marie is an accomplished ballet dancer haunted by her tragic youthful affair with a shy, handsome student. Her memories of the rocky shores of Stockholm's outer archipelago mingle with scenes from her gloomy present, most of them set in the dark backstage environs of the theater where she works.
20) Hets =: Torment
Language
Swedish
Description
A dark coming-of-age drama about a boarding-school senior, Widgren, terrorized by his sadistic Latin teacher. When Widgren falls for a troubled local girl, Bertha, he finds himself caught up even further in a web of emotional mind games.