Fårö-dokument

Ingmar Bergman had already been living on Fårö, the “Island of Sheep”, for three years when he shot FÅRÖ-DOKUMENT in 1969, which was followed ten years later by FÅRÖ-DOKUMENT 1979. Originally he wanted to make a documentary with cameraman Sven Nykvist on the island’s sheep, but the more he spoke with the inhabitants, the more interested he became in their lives and problems. So he conducted many interviews with them, to which he added images of the austere countryside, the birth of lambs in the icy winter, the gigantic rocks on the coast, and the agricultural production of the islanders. At the end he becomes their advocate, appealing to the distant government in Stockholm and deploring the grievances that force the young people to leave the island to find work elsewhere.

At the end of the 1960s Bergman shot a number of other films on Fårö, including the feature films PERSONA (1965/66), SKAMMEN (1967/68) and EN PASSION (1968/69).