Autumn SonataMovies like Autumn Sonata
- Key Features:
- Mother-daughter relationship, Family drama, Guilt, Regret, Sacrifice, Mental illness, Estrangement, Confrontation, Complex characters, Character study, Classical music, Director-driven, Cerebral
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Fans of Ingmar Bergman, Those interested in complex family dramas, Viewers who appreciate character-driven stories, Art house cinema enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Resentment → Revelation → Acceptance
Autumn Sonata

After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out that her mentally impaired daughter, Helena, is out of the asylum and living with Eva.
Autumn Sonata
A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.

Rational, exacting, and self-controlled theater director, Henrik Vogler, often stays after rehearsal to think and plan. On this day, Anna comes back, ostensibly looking for a bracelet. She is the lead in his new production of Strindberg's A Dream Play. She talks of her hatred for her mother, now dead, an alcoholic actress, who was Vogler's star and lover.

During a brief summer vacation, a lonely woman recalls her first love thirteen years earlier.

A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.

The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

Karin hopes to recover from her recent stay at a mental hospital by spending the summer at her family's cottage on a tiny island. Her husband, Martin, cares for her but is frustrated by her physical withdrawal. Her younger brother, Minus, is confused by Karin's vulnerability and his own budding sexuality. Their father, David, cannot overcome his haughty remoteness. Beset by visions, Karin descends further into madness.

Scripted by Ingmar Bergman, this very personal film is about a destructive affair which wrecks the marriage of an actress (Marianne) and musician (Markus). Wanting to continue the affair, Marianne moves in with her lover. But she is tormented by Markus' decision not to let her have custody of their daughter. Finally Markus announces he may have a solution to the stalemate, but this leads to deception, lies and ultimately, tragedy.

Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.

After a 15-year marriage, a couple readies for divorce but suddenly realize that their feelings haven't vanished yet.

A jaded mother makes a last-ditch effort to keep her family together by taking them on a trip to their teenage daughter’s pole dancing competition.

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.

A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.

Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.

When Charlotte, 27, meets her brother Henrik, 35, for the first time as an adult, it becomes an encounter without boundaries, between two people who don't know what a normal family is. How does sibling love manifest itself if you have never experienced it before? Homesick is an unusual family drama about seeking a family, and breaking every rule to be one.

Today is Lara’s 60th birthday, which happens to fall on the same day as her pianist son’s career-defining concert. A failed pianist herself, Lara spends the time before his performance pacing about Berlin—boiling with jealousy, nerves, and pride—trying to get hold of her elusive son.

In this film about Ingmar Bergman's parents, Henrik Bergman is studying for the priesthood and trying to make ends meet when he encounters the lovely, affluent Anna. Despite their social differences, Henrik and Anna fall in love, wed and move to the country. They lead a quiet life as Henrik works as a priest, but it isn't long before the simple people and plain surroundings make Anna long for a more lavish lifestyle, which causes marital stress.

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

A number of complicated relationships develop between a circus ringmaster, his estranged wife and his lover.

Three women in a maternity ward share their lives and intimate thoughts, and face the choice of keeping their babies or offering them for adoption.

Jenny is young. Her life is over. She killed someone. And she would do it again. When an 80-year-old piano teacher discovers the girl’s secret, her brutality and her dreams, she decides to transform her pupil into the musical wunderkind she once was.

An elderly Nagasaki hibakusha spends a summer caring for her four grandchildren, whose curiosity about the 1945 bombing stirs buried memories and moral questions. When an American nephew from Hawaii visits, the family confronts grief, guilt, and the possibility of reconciliation across generations.

A follow-up to Scenes from a Marriage (1973); some thirty years after divorcing Johan, Marianne decides to visit her ex-husband at his summer home. She arrives in the middle of a family drama between Johan's son from another marriage and his granddaughter.

A woman's seaside vacation takes a dark turn when her obsession with a young mother forces her to confront secrets from her past.

A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.

Katarina is 20 years old. With a troubled past in a dreary suburb, her life seems to be already set in stone - until she discovers music. Everything changes when she hears a performance of Mozart’s 'Requiem' at the Gothenburg Concert Hall that sends her reeling and opens up a beautiful new world. She feels that she has to change her life and get as far away from her ugly reality as possible. But the path she has to follow proves to be a treacherous one, filled with lies, betrayal and a dangerous liaison with the married conductor Adam. Yet Katarina is ready to do anything to gain her new identity.

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.

Will Keane, a Manhattan restaurateur, is content with his playboy lifestyle until he meets Charlotte Fielding, a free-spirited young woman. Together the pair pursue a passionate affair that forces them both to reevaluate what they want out of life, even as fate threatens to steal away their future.

Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice in a small seaside resort in Western France. He is a famous actor, about to turn fifty. She is a piano teacher in her forties. They were in love fifteen years ago, then separated. Time has passed. They each went their ways and slowly healed. When Mathieu goes try to overcome his melancholia in a thermal spa, he stumbles upon Alice.

Andrey Pavlovich Buzykin, who makes a living by teaching at an institute and translating English literature, is cheating on his wife. Buzykin's main problem is that he's a kind man with a weak character. The lies he is telling his wife all the time are inconvincing, but he never has the courage to tell her the truth. His lover, Alla, is aware of his family life, but gets offended when, for example, he cannot meet her so that he doesn't come home late, or when he doesn't want to go home in a new jacket she gives him to avoid having to explain to his wife. Alla and Nina, Andrei's wife, both leave him, forgive him, and return to him at the same time, and Andrei continues with this kind of life, full of suffering and deceit. Finally, both women are so fed up with his lies that they don't believe him even when he is telling the truth...

As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.

Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.

A mother, enduringly traumatized by the disappearance of her three-year old daughter 15 years ago, has cut herself off from her ex-husband and son. However, when a troubled young woman with a checkered past enters her life, old psychic wounds painfully resurface, as does the illogical and increasingly irrational hope that the young woman may be the daughter she lost so long ago.

Two violinists in the same orchestra fall in love and get married, but they can't get along.

Two different women – a young photo model and her boss – dream about a happy life with beloved men. Their dreams are as different as they are.

As celebrated conductor Lydia Tár starts rehearsals for a career-defining symphony, the consequences of her past choices begin to echo in the present.

One morning just before Christmas, Leena receives a phone call from a hospital in her childhood hometown telling her that her mother is dying. This news takes her on a journey to face her mother for the first time in her adult life. Leena has fought all her life to let go of her grief over her lost and dark childhood. She is now forced to deal with her past to be able to move on.

After taking a bullet to the head, Salander is under close supervision in a hospital and is set to face trial for attempted murder on her eventual release. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his researchers at Millennium magazine, Salander must prove her innocence. In doing this she plays against powerful enemies and her own past.

A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years.

A woman must fly back to her hometown when her Alzheimer's-stricken mother wanders into a blizzard. The return home forces her to confront her past.

After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...

On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want?

A Hungarian family forced to flee the Communist country for the United States must leave a young daughter behind. Six years later, the family arranges to bring the absent daughter to the United States where she has trouble adjusting. The daughter then decides to travel to Budapest to discover her identity.

Johan and Marianne are married and seem to have it all. Their happiness, however, is a façade for a troubled relationship, which becomes even rockier when Johan admits that he's having an affair. Before long, the spouses separate and move towards finalizing their divorce, but they make attempts at reconciling. Even as they pursue other relationships, Johan and Marianne realize that they have a significant bond, but also many issues that hinder that connection.

An artist and her elderly mother confront long-buried secrets when they return to a former family home, now a hotel haunted by its mysterious past.

Anita, a young woman with a troubled childhood and a hunger for love, finds a soul mate in Erik, a kindly college student.

Arrested while a student in university, Yusuf is released from prison after ten years. He returns home and is welcomed by his sick and elderly mother. Soon he will meet Eka, a beautiful Georgian girl who is a sex worker, and love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness.

John Peterson lives with his partner Eric and their adopted daughter in Southern California. When he is visited by his aging father Willis from Los Angeles who is searching for a place to retire, their two very different worlds collide.

Despite being deposed as president of his condominium association, grumpy 59-year-old Ove continues to watch over his neighbourhood with an iron fist. When pregnant Parvaneh and her family move into the terraced house opposite Ove and she accidentally back into Ove’s mailbox, it sets off a series of unexpected changes in his life.

An English-German filmmaking couple retreat to Fårö for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Ingmar Bergman. As the summer and their screenplays advance, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur against the backdrop of the Island's wild landscape.

After a gifted musician inherits a mansion after her long lost father dies under mysterious circumstances, she discovers his last musical masterpiece riddled with cryptic symbols that unravels an evil secret, triggering dark forces that reach beyond her imagination.

Irene Wagner, the wife of the prominent German scientist Professor Albert Wagner, had been having an affair with Erich Baumann. She does not disclose this to her husband, hoping to preserve his innocence and their "perfect marriage". This fills her with anxiety and guilt. However, Johanna Schultze, Erich's jealous ex-girlfriend, learns about the affair and begins to blackmail Irene, turning Irene's psychological torture into a harsh reality.

Ten years have gone by since Elena's six-year old son has disappeared. The last thing she heard of him was a phone call he gave her, saying that he was lost on a beach in France and couldn't find his father. Nowadays, Elena lives on this same beach and manages a restaurant. She is finally beginning to emerge from this tragic episode when she meets a French teenager who strongly reminds her of her lost son. The two of them will embark on a relationship which will sow chaos and distrust around them.

In the last days of a dying logging town, Christian returns to his family home for his father Henry’s wedding. While home, Christian reconnects with his childhood friend Oliver, who has stayed in town working at Henry’s timber mill and is now out of a job. As Christian gets to know Oliver’s wife Charlotte, daughter Hedvig, and father Walter, he discovers a secret that could tear Oliver’s family apart.

An attention-craving mother nearing 50, unemployed and living with her pregnant daughter and son-in-law, suddenly finds herself with child, too...

A recovering drug addict is granted a day’s leave from rehab and returns to Oslo, where he reconnects with friends, faces the weight of his past, and struggles with uncertainty about his future. Over the course of one day, he drifts through encounters that reflect his longing for connection and his deep sense of alienation.

Elderly woman Berthe leaves her house to live with her daughter Emilie. Emilie and her brother Antoine had a falling out three years ago and have not seen each other since, but Emilie invites him for Christmas. Memories will resurface and impact both Berthe's destiny and the strange relationship between Emilie and Antoine.

The four wives of four brothers share stories of their marriages as they wait for their husbands in a small, secluded cottage.

Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place where the sun never sets, gradually turns into a dark nightmare as the mysterious inhabitants invite them to participate in their disturbing festive activities.

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

After an older lady hangs herself in a church, a new psychiatrist discovers she was obsessed with the disappearance of his eight-year-old son, who vanished three years earlier. Meanwhile, three city dwellers are restoring a house when they realize it is haunted.

From Paris in the 1960s to London in the first decade of the third millennium, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences, its upsets and its disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.

A Swedish housewife begins an adulterous affair with an American archaeologist, unaware of his emotional scars as a Holocaust survivor; consequently, their relationship will be painfully difficult.

A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.

The story of a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life is completely consumed with dance. Nina lives with her retired ballerina mother who zealously supports her daughter's professional ambition. When the artistic director decides to replace the prima ballerina for the opening production of their new season, Nina is his first choice.

With a father suffering from neurodegenerative disease, a young woman lives with her eight-year-old daughter. While struggling to secure a decent nursing home, she runs into an unavailable friend with whom she embarks on an affair.

As Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette) gather at the deathbed of their mother, Ann (Vanessa Redgrave), they learn for the first time that their mother lived an entire other lifetime during one evening 50 years ago. In vivid flashbacks, the young Ann (Claire Daines) spends one night with a man named Harris (Patrick Wilson), who was the love of her life.

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

Arima Kousei won numerous piano competitions while under the strict watch of his mother. He was known as the human metronome during that time. Since the death of his mother, Kousei has been unable to hear the sound of his piano. He then meets Miyazono Kaori through childhood friend Sawabe Tsubaki. Kaori plays the violin and has a free sprit. Since meeting her, Kousei is able to face the piano again. Meanwhile, Kaori holds a secret.

A man moves his two daughters to Italy after their mother dies in a car accident, in order to revitalize their lives. Genoa changes all three of them as the youngest daughter starts to see the ghost of her mother, while the older one discovers her sexuality.

Together for 20 years, a couple that has grown apart over time receives difficult news that will impact the entire family. As they try to make sense of the changes, they end up rediscovering their love for one another.

Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?

Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.

When a sudden tragedy uproots the lives of two women and their families, they begin to question the relationships they once held so dear.

Kate and her daughter Beth live alone in an isolated farmhouse in the woods, but when Kate slowly begins to suspect that something sinister is happening, her motherly instincts are put to the test.

Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer, but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their home. Gradually, however, Abla's resolve softens and Samia's arrival begins to offer all of them the prospect of a new life.

Late one evening Alex suddenly abandons his girlfriend, Simone, to pursue the beautiful Aimee. In his encounter with Aimee time and place dissolve for him and he becomes a stranger to Simone, to whom he cannot return.

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, in her late-thirties, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.

Mélanie Prouvost, a ten-year-old butcher's daughter, is a gifted pianist. That is why she and her parents decide that she sit for the Conservatory entrance exam. Although Mélanie is very likely to be admitted, she unfortunately gets distracted by the president of the jury's offhand attitude and she fails. Ten years later, Mélanie becomes her page turner, waiting patiently for her revenge.

After weeks of traveling through Europe, the immature William finds himself in Copenhagen, the place of his father’s birth. He befriends the youthful Effy, who works in William’s hotel as part of an internship program, and they set off to find William’s last living relative. Effy’s mix of youthful exuberance and wisdom challenges William unlike any woman ever has. As the attraction builds, he must come to grips with destabilizing elements of his family’s sordid past.

A drama centered on a classical pianist who has been diagnosed with ALS and the brash college student who becomes her caregiver.

Lila, a famous retired singer, loses her memory after suffering an accident, just as she planned her return to the stage.

Marco and Anita discover they are expecting a child. Finally a ray of light in Marco’s life after his heartbreak following the loss of Leo, his first born with his former wife Clara. Suddenly, however Perla, the new owner where the couple lived until the tragic accident, bursts into Marco’s and his ex-wife’s lives. The mysterious woman claims she keeps feeling a strange presence and hearing the voice of a child that is tormenting her and her son. Marco therefore finds himself torn between the ties of the past and an unwritten future.

Called to court on obscenity charges, a theatre troupe are forced to expose their neuroses and inner psychological torments.

After author Mia finds love with single father Emil, their happiness is put to the test as they undergo fertility treatments to have kids of their own.

While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.

A girl who went missing after an accident returns 10 years later and reunites with her grandmother.

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

When elderly mother Edna inexplicably vanishes, her daughter rushes to the family's decaying home, finding clues of her increasing dementia scattered around the house in her absence.

A newly appointed teacher finds herself being followed, and soon discovers that one of her own students is obsessed with her.




