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Poster for Fanny and Alexander

Fanny and Alexander

1982 · 3h 8m · R Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

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Overview

As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
100%
Tomatometer
Fresh

A sprawling, ornately constructed entertainment.

Lance Goldenberg, Village Voice
Fresh

This premiere of the original cut, running at 312 minutes, leaves room for more than a story of one life.

Logan Hill, New York Magazine/Vulture
Fresh

Sumptuous, haunting, and unusually tender... a nakedly psychological 'in' to [Bergman's] earliest artistic impulses; nothing else in his oeuvre addresses so directly his childhood escapes into fantasy as the by-product of a harsh Lutheran upbringing.

Aaron Hillis, Village Voice
Fresh

Our young protagonist will be obsessed with death and see ghosts everywhere. Never has the prison of childhood seemed so inescapable.

Melissa Anderson, Time Out New York
Fresh

The result is one of Bergman's most haunting and suggestive films.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

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