Film

Bergman Island

Name: Bergman Island
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2021
Cast: Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth, Mia Wasikowska, Anders Danielsen Lie, Hampus Nordenson

Drama
Slow-burning

A filmmaker couple retreats to Bergman's island to write, each chasing their own creative vision. Mia Hansen-Løve's film is playfully intricate—meta, romantic, occasionally maddening—for viewers who love watching artists struggle with themselves and each other.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy films that mull over their own making, where a story about storytelling slowly leaks into the characters' marriage and you don't mind lingering in long conversations about art.

Skip it if you want a plot that moves, since this is mostly talk, wandering walks and quiet pauses, and its meta games can feel more clever than moving.

What it asks of you: Under two hours of unhurried time, with most of the weight carried by conversation and the island's bare, windswept scenery, and a mood that drifts rather than jolts.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Mulholland Drive2001

David Lynch's Hollywood fever dream about ambition, desire and the stories we tell ourselves. Like Bergman Island, it's about the film industry eating its own and the selves we invent to survive it.

But Three hours and genuinely baffling by design. If you need resolution or clarity, this will frustrate you deeply.

A Bigger Splash2015

Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes on a Sicilian island; desire and artistic ego in gorgeous sunlight. Luca Guadagnino films the body as text. Dangerous and beautiful.

But Sexually charged and at times brutal. The final act goes to places that some will find genuinely disturbing.

Contempt1963

Godard's film about a film production falling apart. Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli; the end of a marriage told through Cinemascope and primary colours. Cinema eating itself.

But Deliberately cold and fragmented. Godard is not interested in making you comfortable or explaining himself.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Bergman Island

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Wings of Desire1987

Both films are about artists on retreat, watching their own lives as though they were fiction. Both understand that the self you present is always a performance.

Wenders watches Berlin from above and below; angels observing human longing. It's about the desire to experience rather than create, but it's suffused with the same romantic yearning for impossible things.

But Lyrical, digressive, sometimes unbearably precious. If you need narrative traction, you'll drown.

Frances Ha2013

Noah Baumbach in black and white, following a dancer adrift in New York. Funny and aching. About the gap between who you are and who you thought you'd be.

But Greta Gerwig's character is often insufferable. The film doesn't soften that, and neither should you.

Stalker1979

Tarkovsky's film about a guide leading two men through a mysterious zone. Hypnotic meditation on desire, faith and what we're willing to risk. Slow cinema at its most powerful.

But 163 minutes of deliberately paced philosophy. Impatience will wreck this entirely.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Charlie Kaufman's film about an artist building a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse. Dizzying, tender, obsessed with how art consumes the artist.

But Baroque and sometimes incoherent. It's asking you to follow the artist's fractured logic, not your own.

The Last Laugh1924

Murnau's silent film about an aging doorman and his dignity. Visually inventive, deeply moving. An ancestor to all films about identity and the stories we believe about ourselves.

But Silent and from 1924. The emotional register will feel strange; you have to meet it halfway.

Scenes from a Marriage2021

Hansen-Løve is working in Bergman's shadow on Bergman's island; this is the foundational text. It's about the fiction couples write to make their marriage work.

Bergman's five-hour television play about a marriage disintegrating. Raw, intimate, terrifying. You'll never watch it and be the same about relationships again.

But Originally made for Swedish television in long takes. Claustrophobic, relentlessly focused on two people arguing. Feels like home invasion.

The Souvenir2019

A film about a young artist trying to convert lived trauma into art. Like Bergman Island, it's about the line between experience and fiction, and whether that distinction means anything when you're making work.

Honor Swinton Byrne plays a film student falling for a man who destroys her. Gorgeously shot, ambiguous about what's real. A young artist's reckoning with love, art and complicity.

But The narrative is deliberately oblique. You're left reconstructing what happened; the film won't explain it for you.