PMA Films: “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair”: Cries and Whispers (1972)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman. 91 minutes. Rated R. In Swedish with English subtitles.
Screens as part of "Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair," a week-long festival presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque. Discounted festival passes ($65, or $50 for PMA members and students) are available here. A festival pass will automatically register you for all "Bleak Week" screenings. Click the "Get Tickets" link above to purchase tickets for this single screening.
This existential wail of a drama from Ingmar Bergman concerns two sisters, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), keeping vigil for a third, Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is dying of cancer and can find solace only in the arms of a beatific servant (Kari Sylwan). An intensely felt film that is one of Bergman’s most striking formal experiments, Cries and Whispers (which won an Oscar for the extraordinary color photography of Sven Nykvist) is a powerful depiction of human behavior in the face of death, positioned on the borders between reality and nightmare, tranquillity and terror.
About “Bleak Week”:
Presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque, “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair” is an annual festival showcasing some of the greatest works of cinema from across the globe that venture into the darkest sides of humanity and the bleakest points in human history.
PMA Films joins the fifth annual edition in June 2026 as the festival expands to nearly 100 theaters across the U.S., Canada, UK and South and Central America, with each venue presenting its own lineup of uncompromising films defined by unpleasant truths and raw empathy.
The Portland Museum of Art’s lineup features 11 masterpieces from a variety of decades, genres, and international auteurs, beginning with Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers on June 8 and concluding with Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry on June 14. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Tár) will join us to discuss Taste of Cherry. PMA Films will also host its first 16mm film screenings in many years in partnership with Kinonik on June 9 (Kiss Me Deadly/La Jetée) and June 11 (Black Girl), and will partner with SPACE Gallery to screen the devastating animated films Watership Down and The Plague Dogs at SPACE on June 13.