As a young woman, Anna married Henrik, an earnest theology student. She finds herself stifled by his emotional needs, but only realizes the gravity of her mistake when she meets Tomas, a younger man. Their illicit love-affair makes her feel passionately alive, for the first time in years. But her happiness is also her torment. Caught between two very different worlds, she eventually turns to Jacob, both her priest and old friend she can trust. Jacob gives Anna advices that leads to dramatic consequences. –Cannes Film Festival
Though born a citizen of Norway, Liv Ullmann did not set foot in her homeland until she was seven years old. The daughter of a Norwegian engineer stationed in Japan at the time of her birth, Ullmann moved to Canada when World War II broke out, then relocated to Norway in 1946, where she received the bulk of her education. Deciding upon an acting career, she studied at the Webber-Douglas academy in London. Ullmann began her stage work in Stavanger and Oslo, and in the late ’50s, she starred in the Norwegian production of The Diary of Anne Frank.
In films from 1959, Ullmann’s breakthrough role was catatonic actress Elisabeth Vogler in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), a part she landed primarily because of her striking resemblance to co-star Bibi Andersson. Bergman became Ullmann’s mentor and paramour; they lived together for several years, during which time Ullmann bore the director a daughter named Linn Ullmann, who has occasionally appeared in her mother’s films. Ullmann… read more
