Ang Lee and six other filmmakers on how Ingmar Bergman inspired them

While writing our book, Ingmar Bergman at the Crossroads: Between Theory and Practice, several filmmakers shared stories with us of the impact the legendary Swedish director had on their own work.

One was the Taiwanese-American film director Ang Lee. Lee travelled to the Ingmar Bergman film festival held every summer on one of Sweden’s most remote sea islands, Fårö, in 2006. He was hoping to meet up with the legendary Swedish film director in person, then still going strong, aged 88.

Here was Bergman, director and writer of such sombre film classics as The Seventh Seal (1957), the iconic medieval drama with a pale-faced, black-cloaked Death walking amongst humans and the starkly realistic divorce drama, Scenes from a Marriage (1973).