Mai Zetterling
Filmmaker and Actress
November 28, 2025 to January 5, 2026
Mai Zetterling (1925–1994) was a pioneer and groundbreaker in the world of film. She was not afraid to fund her projects in unconventional ways and her films often provoked debate about everything from gender roles and sexuality to seal hunting. Even in her 1964 feature debut Loving Couples, Zetterling emerges as a willful visual narrator who has more in common with filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel and Ingmar Bergman than the political realists of the 1960s.
Zetterling became a film director at a time when few women were and fought for her right to make her own decisions. In her autobiography All Those Tomorrows (1984), she writes: "It feels like I'm a long way away from pretty much every norm there is." She often worked from her own scripts and acted as her own creative producer. Somewhat reluctantly, and without any particular feminist intentions, she became a role model for later generations of women filmmakers.
Zetterling entered Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre as a student in 1942 and, after graduating, worked there until 1947. She also made her acting debut during this time, achieving her major breakthrough in Alf Sjöberg's film Torment (1944), written by Ingmar Bergman. Further success followed when Gustaf Edgren cast her in the rural drama Sunshine Follows Rain (1946), one of the biggest Swedish box office successes of the post-war period. In the same year, Zetterling also appeared in the class drama Iris and the Lieutenant, for which she won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival.
In 1948, Zetterling began an international career at Rank Studios in the UK, where she worked on over 20 film productions. During a brief period in Hollywood, she appeared in a few films opposite male leads such as Danny Kaye and Richard Widmark, but the Hollywood lifestyle did not suit her and she returned to Britain in 1953 to focus on theater in London.
Before directing her first feature, Zetterling made five short films produced in the UK, where she lived. She wrote the scripts and directed them alongside her then-husband David Hughes. The last of these, The War Game (1963), with cinematography by the later-famous Chris Menges, won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Zetterling's first feature-length film as director was Loving Couples (1964), based on the novels of Agnes von Krusenstjerna. With its sexual candor, the film caused some controversy in Cannes but received predominantly positive reviews. British critic Kenneth Tynan described Loving Couples as "one of the most ambitious debuts since Citizen Kane."
Night Games (1966) was a kind of nightmare version of the motifs and images she had explored through von Krusenstjerna. The film’s depiction of incestuous love provoked consternation and scandal once again, this time at the Venice Film Festival, where there was a police cordon around the press screening. In San Francisco, Shirley Temple resigned from the festival's board in protest. Zetterling herself wrote of the film: "I have tried to tell a story about the Europe of today. I try to be honest, and that's why it shows signs of decadence. Perverted sex is one of these signs, perhaps the most dramatically obvious one, and I use it because I think one can only reach a positive view of things by passing through countless negative ways of seeing the world."
With The Girls (1968), Zetterling staged a playful confrontation with prejudice, politics, and gender roles, told from the perspective of three actresses touring with Aristophanes' Lysistrata. When The Girls was released, it received terrible reviews from almost all critics – mainly male – but one notable exception was Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote a highly positive review in Le Monde: "Ironic and comic, this film moves us by the beauty of its landscapes, its poetry and, above all, its subtle tenderness."
De Beauvoir contacted Zetterling and asked her to film The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe). It was to be a seven-hour, internationally co-produced television series depicting "the situation of women in various places around the world, how it has been and how it is." It was one of many projects that were never made. The Zetterling archive at the Swedish Film Institute contains scripts and drafts for more than 20 unmade films, including Casanova Ladies, about Mata Hari, Lola Montez, and Queen Kristina; Cock and Ball, described as "a story about a psychiatrist with a larger-than-life penis;" and Lilith, based on a short story by Anaïs Nin, which the author had sent to Zetterling.
Mai Zetterling was one of the founders of the international association Film Women International, formed at the UNESCO Women's Film Symposium during the UN-declared International Women's Year in 1975. Other members included Susan Sontag, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Valie Export, and Márta Mészáros. The Women's Year also gave Zetterling the opportunity to make the short film We Have Many Names (1976), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Zetterling did not return to Swedish film until 1986, with her magnificent work Amorosa (1986), about Agnes von Krusenstjerna and her unhappy marriage to David Sprengel. The film reaffirmed Zetterling's postion as one of the most creative directors in Swedish cinema. (Kajsa Hedström)
Introductions by Christoph Huber, Elisabeth Streit, and Tom Waibel at selected screenings.
Mai Zetterling (1925–1994) was a pioneer and groundbreaker in the world of film. She was not afraid to fund her projects in unconventional ways and her films often provoked debate about everything from gender roles and sexuality to seal hunting. Even in her 1964 feature debut Loving Couples, Zetterling emerges as a willful visual narrator who has more in common with filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel and Ingmar Bergman than the political realists of the 1960s.
Zetterling became a film director at a time when few women were and fought for her right to make her own decisions. In her autobiography All Those Tomorrows (1984), she writes: "It feels like I'm a long way away from pretty much every norm there is." She often worked from her own scripts and acted as her own creative producer. Somewhat reluctantly, and without any particular feminist intentions, she became a role model for later generations of women filmmakers.
Zetterling entered Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre as a student in 1942 and, after graduating, worked there until 1947. She also made her acting debut during this time, achieving her major breakthrough in Alf Sjöberg's film Torment (1944), written by Ingmar Bergman. Further success followed when Gustaf Edgren cast her in the rural drama Sunshine Follows Rain (1946), one of the biggest Swedish box office successes of the post-war period. In the same year, Zetterling also appeared in the class drama Iris and the Lieutenant, for which she won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival.
In 1948, Zetterling began an international career at Rank Studios in the UK, where she worked on over 20 film productions. During a brief period in Hollywood, she appeared in a few films opposite male leads such as Danny Kaye and Richard Widmark, but the Hollywood lifestyle did not suit her and she returned to Britain in 1953 to focus on theater in London.
Before directing her first feature, Zetterling made five short films produced in the UK, where she lived. She wrote the scripts and directed them alongside her then-husband David Hughes. The last of these, The War Game (1963), with cinematography by the later-famous Chris Menges, won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Zetterling's first feature-length film as director was Loving Couples (1964), based on the novels of Agnes von Krusenstjerna. With its sexual candor, the film caused some controversy in Cannes but received predominantly positive reviews. British critic Kenneth Tynan described Loving Couples as "one of the most ambitious debuts since Citizen Kane."
Night Games (1966) was a kind of nightmare version of the motifs and images she had explored through von Krusenstjerna. The film’s depiction of incestuous love provoked consternation and scandal once again, this time at the Venice Film Festival, where there was a police cordon around the press screening. In San Francisco, Shirley Temple resigned from the festival's board in protest. Zetterling herself wrote of the film: "I have tried to tell a story about the Europe of today. I try to be honest, and that's why it shows signs of decadence. Perverted sex is one of these signs, perhaps the most dramatically obvious one, and I use it because I think one can only reach a positive view of things by passing through countless negative ways of seeing the world."
With The Girls (1968), Zetterling staged a playful confrontation with prejudice, politics, and gender roles, told from the perspective of three actresses touring with Aristophanes' Lysistrata. When The Girls was released, it received terrible reviews from almost all critics – mainly male – but one notable exception was Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote a highly positive review in Le Monde: "Ironic and comic, this film moves us by the beauty of its landscapes, its poetry and, above all, its subtle tenderness."
De Beauvoir contacted Zetterling and asked her to film The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe). It was to be a seven-hour, internationally co-produced television series depicting "the situation of women in various places around the world, how it has been and how it is." It was one of many projects that were never made. The Zetterling archive at the Swedish Film Institute contains scripts and drafts for more than 20 unmade films, including Casanova Ladies, about Mata Hari, Lola Montez, and Queen Kristina; Cock and Ball, described as "a story about a psychiatrist with a larger-than-life penis;" and Lilith, based on a short story by Anaïs Nin, which the author had sent to Zetterling.
Mai Zetterling was one of the founders of the international association Film Women International, formed at the UNESCO Women's Film Symposium during the UN-declared International Women's Year in 1975. Other members included Susan Sontag, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Valie Export, and Márta Mészáros. The Women's Year also gave Zetterling the opportunity to make the short film We Have Many Names (1976), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Zetterling did not return to Swedish film until 1986, with her magnificent work Amorosa (1986), about Agnes von Krusenstjerna and her unhappy marriage to David Sprengel. The film reaffirmed Zetterling's postion as one of the most creative directors in Swedish cinema. (Kajsa Hedström)
Introductions by Christoph Huber, Elisabeth Streit, and Tom Waibel at selected screenings.
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