Between Renoir and Nouvelle Vague: the Cannes 2025 renaissance of Bo Widerberg

The Nordic representation at the Cannes Film Festival 1960-80 consists of 47 features. One is from Iceland, two are Finnish, seven are Norwegian, 13 are Danish, and 33 are Swedish productions. Among these, three are co-productions, involving at least one Nordic neighbour.

The two decades cover Swedish director Bo Widerberg’s presence at the festival, which with six entries is the most frequent one; he even “beats out” his famed countryman Ingmar Bergman, who had four entries during this period (out of total nine between 1947 and 1998). If there was a Nordic “Mr Cannes” there and then, Bo Widerberg was surely it.

28 years after his passing in 1997, Widerberg remains a cherished national treasure, while his Cannes triumphs (including a Best Actress prize, a jury prize and a Grand Prix) have gradually faded away from the international collective memory. The last decade, however, has brought several indications of a renaissance. In France, the celebrated director Olivier Assayas has taken numerous opportunities to pay tribute to “one of the underrated geniuses of world cinema”. In the US, the foremost film connoisseur label Criterion put out a voluminous Widerberg collection in 2023, fittingly sub-captioned “New Swedish Cinema”.

In 2025, at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, a brand new documentary sees the light of day. Being Bo Widerberg (I huvudet på Bo/lit. “Inside Bo’s head”) is made by Jon Asp and Mattias Nohrborg, who in their “regular” positions work as editor of the Point of View film magazine (Asp) and head of acquisitions at TriArt Film (Nohrborg). Both make their directorial debut here, a quite organic process, according to Asp.

“It never really felt strange at all,” reflects Asp on his move to “the other side”. “When doing a documentary on cinema, you have great use of your experience as writer-critic and/or as a distributor. I can warmly recommend that everyone in our professions should try it. The different perspectives would be warmly welcome.”

The film follows the Malmö-born Widerberg from his early days as a promising 1950s novelist, going on to become the angry young critic of contemporary Swedish cinema in the early 1960s, and then putting his vision straight into action, resulting in the groundbreaking films The Baby Carriage (Barnvagnen, 1963) and Raven’s End (Kvarteret Korpen, 1963), and arguably single-handedly starting the Swedish “nouvelle vague” within a single year.

“The 1960s is bar none our greatest golden age, greater even than the silent era,” Nohrborg concludes. “A whole batch of young directors were given a shot, some of which would remain on the scene for many years to come and become very influential. And probably none more than Bo Widerberg.”

The documentary brings testimonies from the likes of Lisa Langseth, Ruben Östlund, Lars von Trier, Mia Hansen-Løve and the aforementioned Assayas; national and international directors who’ve been captured by the heartbreaking love story of Elvira Madigan (1967), the poetic accounts of working class uprising through the labour demonstration of Ådalen 31 (1969) and the social activism of Joe Hill (1971), both ending in mortal gunfire, but bringing a long-lasting legacy of inspiration for future freedom fights. The arrival of The Man on the Roof (Mannen på taket, 1976) is rightly said to constitute a “before and after” mark in the tradition of Nordic crime cinema, immensely influential to this day.

Appearing in the documentary and singing praise is also Tarik Saleh, the director behind Sweden’s 2025 Cannes main competition entry, Eagles of the Republic, who on arrival to the festival seemed just as proud of his achievement here as of his own film.

“I feel very connected to him, because he would work within genres and wasn’t afraid of making for example crime films while still maintaining this extremely high artistic level. He understood something that very few people even today understand: capturing real life in front of the camera.”

Widerberg’s influence on later generations, directly or indirectly, can be sensed among several Nordic directors at the festival. Norwegian Erik Poppe, in town for the launch of the forthcoming Jon Fosse-scripted Bad Moon Rising, calls him “a clear voice from a time with a small group of Nordic auteur directors, where he perhaps was the clearest and the greatest. Very special, very different.”

“In a territory between well-told commercial stories and artistic visions he has greatly influenced me in his braveness when it came to taking some fairly large risks in some of his projects,” continues Poppe. “Plus, he was incredibly good when it came to directing actors.“

Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason, presenting his fourth feature The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er) in the Cannes Première section, felt “totally connected” when seeing Elvira Madigan. “That film felt so handmade and so direct, and almost looked like a French new wave, so very much in the moment. He totally works – also today!”

To Anna Croneman, CEO of the Swedish Film Institute, Widerberg remains her “favourite Swedish director of all time”, not least due to her own personal and emotional background. “My family comes from Ådalen in the north, so there’s that, but as a filmmaker in general, he’s singular, and he could work within different genres. I love how he put a love story right in the middle of the very political Ådalen 31, and when he got criticised, he just said it was something that the audience would understand and want to see. ‘Kalles kaviar is so boring’, he said. ‘Why don’t we give them Russian caviar instead?’ – I should really have a T-shirt with that quote printed. It’s such an interesting and great reflection. Like he’s saying ‘Hey, I have a heart, don’t you ever doubt it. But if we want to get this story out widely, then we have to bring a story that can be received by the audience.’”

The Paris-based Swedish director Sofia Norlin is in Cannes developing her forthcoming project, tentatively titled Riviera. “The Cinémathèque Française recently held a retrospective of his films, which I attended with great pleasure. It was sold out, with long lines outside the cinema. In their bookshop, all the films can be found on DVD, and there are several books, all in French. It’s almost like he has a greater name here than up North. And they often return to Ådalen 31.”

In that film, from 1969, a memorable storyline is devoted to the French impressionist painter Auguste Renoir. At the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, one of the main competition films is actually titled just that – Renoir. Another one has an equally kindred title: Nouvelle Vague.

Somewhere in the middle of this, Bo Widerberg gets the world premiere of his renaissance.

International trailer:

Being Bo Widerberg is produced by B-Reel Films with co-production by SVT, Film Stockholm and Film i Skåne. It opens in 60 cinemas in France July 2, along with 11 films as part of an event retrospective, "Bo Widerberg, l'essentiel". The distributor, Malavida, has been a driving force in the rediscovery of Widerberg's work, since 2009 for the first DVD editions and since 2014 for the first cinema re-releases. The Swedish premiere is October 10. The film will also open in Denmark (date tbc), and other territories are right now also in progress.