Persona

A nurse and an actress who refuses to speak seem to fuse identities in Ingmar Bergman’s disturbing, formally experimental psychological drama.

The horrors of modern existence, exemplified by TV footage we see of a monk setting fire to himself in protest against the Vietnam War, weigh heavily on Bergman’s intense chamber drama. Stage actress Elisabet Vogler (Ullmann) suddenly refuses to speak and goes to convalesce by the sea with nurse Alma (Andersson), where a fraught battle of wills and identities begins.

Ranked 18th in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll