Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #8. Bergman Island – Mia Hansen-Løve

Bergman Island

Mia Hansen-Løve continues her prolific output with the French-produced English language Bergman Island, her seventh feature in just a little over a decade since her 2007 debut All is Forgiven. Produced through Olivier Pere’s Arte France Cinema and Mexico City-based production/distribution house Piano (which includes Rodrigo Teixeira and Julia Chavezmontes as producers), Hansen-Løve heads to the famed Faro Island in Sweden where director Ingmar Bergman lived and wrote his screenplays to tell the story of a heterosexual American screenwriting couple who retreat to the locale to work on their next projects. A stellar international cast includes Mia Wasikowska, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Vicky Krieps of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (2017). Hansen-Løve’s 2007 debut premiered in Directors’ Fortnight while her celebrated sophomore film The Father of My Children (2009) won a Special Jury Prize out of Un Certain Regard. While 2011’s Goodbye First Love competed in Locarno, Hansen-Løve scored a Best Director win at theBerlin International Film Festival for Things to Come (review).

Gist: In Hansen-Løve’s script, a pair of American journalists retreat to Faro Island as they work on their next scripts as a pilgrimage paying homage to Ingmar Bergman. However, reality and fiction begin to blur during their isolation in the wilderness of the island.

Release Date/Prediction: Although Hansen-Løve’s 2018 title Maya (read review) received a rather unenthusiastic premiere in the hubbub of the Toronto International Film Festival, we’re expecting Bergman Island, which is currently in post-production, to potentially appear in competition in a competition slot at Venice. The second half will be shot this summer.