From Malmö to Backåkra to Stockholm to the Big Apple and back, Being Bo Widerberg (2025) – screening a few more breathless days in Melbourne and Canberra as part of the Hurtigruten Nordic Film Festival [1] – takes viewers on a captivating journey that is as much physical as it is existential.
The technically and narratively astute documentary co-directed by Jon Asp and Mattias Nohrborg presents us with a groundbreaking filmmaker who provided a faithful rendition of Swedish society at the time, whereby viewers keep being made aware of larger debates and issues affecting and afflicting also the western world at large.
Comparatively short-lived, Widerberg left an all the more long-lived legacy and offered a stark yet often poetic depiction of his contemporary reality through stories that have a lasting impact. His are narratives that “stand for the advent of modern cinema in Sweden” [2] and that come alive and resonate through their deep sense of authenticity and their ability to capture moments that tell of the past as it affects present and future.
As, through Asp’s and Nohrborg’s documentary, we move closer to Widerberg through memories captured in telling footage and ‘witness statements’ by several former wives, in particular, as well as long-term collaborators (e.g., Tommy Berggren and Stellan Skarsgård, as well as several international directors [3] and, on the contrary, an overly posh, pompous and cluelessly rejective Anita Ekberg [4] accustomed to the freedom given to actors by Fellini yet momentarily intrigued by the perhaps more demanding Widerberg; she abandoned the project yet he was the larger winner [5]) we gradually gain an understanding of what defined the Swedish director and constituted his essence. His collaboration with renowned cinematographer, and likewise author, screenwriter and filmmaker, Jan Troell (1962, 1963, 1967 [6]) importantly shaped Widerberg’s winning visually energetic and emotionally powerful filmmaking style; Troell’s evocative photography making all the difference. [7]
An extraordinarily talented man – difficult, obsessive yet impressive, domineering and self-centred but with drive, conviction and ambition – Widerberg relentlessly stuck to his own agenda throughout; always governed by a larger mission and vision and not swayed by the simultaneous fame of his contemporary Ingmar Bergman. On the contrary, a largely unimpressed Widerberg [8] stuck firmly to his guns and created a cinema concerned with class and the plights of ordinary people and that tells it as it is, that stays in the everyday and doesn’t rely heavily on artistic shadow plays or sophisticated pauses, long silences or prompts to get its message across.
While Bergman explored psychological realms and symbolic themes, Widerberg – a Malmöite through and through – created films that directly reflected and confronted Sweden as “a social democratic welfare state which nevertheless could not escape the effects of the worldwide triumph of capitalism”. [9] Using cinema as a tool to deliver a socio-political message, Widerberg criticized Swedish cinema for being disconnected from reality and argued that it failed to portray working-class people and contemporary society.
In doing so, he (not so indirectly) criticised Bergman, auteur par excellence but who, in Widerberg’s view, was too old-fashioned for his own good in the sense of being out of touch with what really mattered among people who really mattered. [10]
Widerberg’s creative process was both intuitive and collaborative. He believed films should be discovered during production rather than planned in the minutest detail. He embraced experimentation, shooting on location, a combination of established and non-professional actors, and unexpected moments (Fimpen, 1964) to inform his work. And he didn’t suffer fools. He also wasn’t blinded by awe for the great Land of the (not so) Free and did not take kindly to suggestions for alternative methods of going about filmmaking as a business.
Rather, failing to get the response he was looking for in a New York too square-minded for his Swedish liking, Widerberg abandoned the no longer so alluring Big Apple to its own fate, took a leap of faith and finished shooting Joe Hill (1971) in Stockholm; successfully reconstructing America on Swedish turf. Throughout his career he delivered time and time again “through multi-layered chronicles of [his] homeland which, for all their specific national qualities, have a universal effect.” [11]
Widerberg was an unstoppable force – a celebrated novelist, scriptwriter [12], and filmmaker once in the making too focussed on his higher purpose to see fame coming (perhaps he wasn’t really that bothered in the first place). When it did, it erupted overnight yet he didn’t let it go to his head, he kept firm to his convictions and did what he had set out to do all along. This is all covered in the documentary. Thoughtfully selected by the Palace Cinema Festival team, Being Bo Widerberg (I huvudet på Bo) highlights an astonishingly accomplished filmmaker whose body of work challenged conventions and reshaped Swedish cinema.
Widerberg was a different kind of genius; a man on a mission who quickly rose to fame through the also global acknowledgement of award-winning Raven’s End (Kvarteret Korpen; winner of Guldbaggen 1964 [13], a contender for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards 1965, and likewise nominated for a Cannes Palme d’Or that same year). [14] Relatively smooth sailing from there but also all eyes on him.
Widerberg’s cinema tells its own larger story and is, again, crucially different from that of Bergman – the intellectual maestro of a highly dialogical and theatrical arthouse cinema; a filmic universe filled with existential conundrums and despair. Bergman impressed through an elemental style that tackled queries relating to God’s existence, man’s moral complicity in violent acts, and the inability of humans to relate to one another, all filtered through narratives of nigh painful psychological intimacy. [15]
Come Widerberg as an artistic counterforce: determined, decisive, and fearless. Obsessively dedicated to his cause, he served up a nostalgic yet fierce cinema that gave all the more voice to people at grassroot level – the actual workers, their passion, worries and joy. Their destinies, that become our own destinies on a universal level, guide narratives set against the backdrop of society at the time.
Both Ingmar Bergman and a Bo Widerberg driven by social awareness, importantly feature in the 2026 Hurtigruten Nordic Film Festival – with a special retrospective dedicated to Widerberg’s Raven’s End (1963), Elvira Madigan (1967), and harrowing Ådalen 31 (1969).
Closing a festival run which began with Árru weaving its own magic while concerned with external threats [16], is Bergman’s iconic Persona – unsettling yet technically masterful. The festival event thus comes full circle, going from Sámi dreamscapes to urgent survival stories in Widerberg’s social realist New Swedish Cinema [17], to artistic sophistication (‘snobbery’, as Widerberg would have it) Bergman style.
Ending on a ‘silently artistic note’, Persona screened on the closing night reception, is a “magnificent film … at the summit of his art” (quote from The Guardian – as referenced in the festival programme, p. 12) and a “stark, spare, endlessly questioning and self-questioning … movie whose enigmas and challenges multiply, like the heads of Hydra.” [18]
Defining figures of Swedish cinema, Bergman and Widerberg left an indelible mark on the medium. The latter impressively and determinedly broke the mould and was neither gobsmacked by the US nor did he surrender to limiting expectations by an artistic community buying into their own restrictive understanding of what stories should be all about.
There’s more to the stories. There’s more to cinema. To resonate with people universally, new ground must be broken. Using the Swedish urban and rural landscape as a both lyrical and dynamic backdrop for a filmic repertoire that often explored the reality of the working class, Bo Widerberg opened a space for the (not so) common man and woman (all of us, in other words) to have a say and gain visibility.
He documented a Sweden that had begun to move in a new direction as impacted by altering societal changes. Through his focus on the individual as they operate within a certain context Widerberg made a revolutionary difference during a life dedicated to arts and storytelling and a heroical laying it out as it is.
Widerberg’s cinema acknowledges and ‘celebrates’ emotional pain as something inevitable yet life changing. In that endeavour he honours resilience and highlights the small glories of everyday life. Rather than simply documenting places (cinematic Stockholm and Malmö, and a serene Backåkra [19] shimmering in the sun; as effortlessly and romantically represented in Kärlek 64, etc.) Widerberg transformed these not so ordinary places and spaces into protagonists and celebrated [the essence of] Sweden throughout.
BO WIDERBERG (1930-1997) – Leaving a legacy by forging his own path and championing the underdog
Words: Dr Jytte Holmqvist
Images: Being Bo Widerberg (film still) | Backåkra – Being Bo Widerberg (film still) | Being Bo Widerberg (film still)
Footnotes:
[1] The Nordic Film Festival runs until 16 August in Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, Byron Bay and Perth.
[3] Olivier Assayas, Ruben Östlund, Mia Hansen-Løve, Lars von Trier, Lisa Langseth, and Tarik Saleh all share their testimonies.
[7] “In a time when images are produced and disappear in an endless stream, Jan Troell’s photographs remind us of something increasingly rare: they are present. They unsettle slightly. They open something up. And suddenly we understand that an image can still alter the way we see a person, a society, an era — perhaps even ourselves.” Don’t miss the exhibition I Am a Camera – Jan Troell and Photography that runs until 20 September 2026: www.trelleborgsmuseer.se
[8] In his 1962 book Visionen i svensk film he argued that “established figures like Ingmar Bergman made ‘vertical’ films looking up at God, rather than ‘horizontal’ films looking sideways at human and class relationships”: www.letterboxd.com
[10] “Widerberg used to be a novelist and a critic. And he wrote this book, a little thin book, but it was a kind of statement about the old Swedish cinema. And Bergman was a central part of the old Swedish cinema. He thought that Bergman was conservative. Widerberg wanted to show the modern Sweden, the present Sweden. How is it to be a person who lives in Sweden right now? And Bergman, he thought was old-fashioned talking about God and demons and things like that.”: www.filmink.com.au
[14] www.nordicfilmfestival.com.au
[15] See www.harvardfilmarchive.org for further insights into Bergman’s prowess. Also recommended is upcoming Bergman Obscure: Unknown Film, Strange Encounters, on the ‘lesser’ work of Ingmar Bergman: www.link.springer.com
[19] Importantly the “personal retreat, writing sanctuary, and final legacy of former United Nations Secretary – General Dag Hammarskjöld: www.daghammarskjold.se and www.un.org