Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1960 • Sweden
Starring Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom
Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING is a harrowing tale of faith, revenge, and savagery in medieval Sweden. With austere simplicity, the director tells the story of the rape and murder of the virgin Karin, and her father Töre’s ruthless pursuit of vengeance against the three killers. Starring Max von Sydow and photographed by the brilliant Sven Nykvist, the film is both beautiful and cruel in its depiction of a world teetering between paganism and Christianity.
Up Next in Foreign-Language Oscar Winners
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Through a Glass Darkly
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1961 • Sweden
Starring Harriet Andersson, Max von Sydow, Gunnar BjörnstrandWhile vacationing on a remote island retreat, a family finds its fragile ties tested when daughter Karin (an astonishing Harriet Andersson) discovers her father (Gunnar Björnstrand) has been ...
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8½
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1963 • Italy
Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Otto e mezzo) turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand e...
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The Shop on Main Street
Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Idá Kaminská, Josef Kroner, František ZvaríkAn inept Slovak peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him “Aryan controller” of an old Jewish widow’s button shop. Humor and traged...