A legendary Bergman film reviewed and revised by artificial intelligence? This festival programming will get people talking

This is a statement that risks getting people talking in today’s context. if not more. Not so much the fact as Gothenburg Film Festival will decide to screen Persona during the release of 2024. Because Ingmar Bergman’s opus is considered one of the greatest classics in the history of cinema.

The study of the female psyche and subconscious is often mentioned as a reference that brings to mind Todd Haynes’s May Before December. And of which Mulholland Drive is rumored to be an unspoken remake.

In short, a real monument. The ones you shouldn’t touch. But that’s exactly what the festival will do in collaboration with SF Studios, Gothenburg Film Studios and The Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, the face of Liv Ullman (one of the main actors in the film along with Bibi Anderson) will be replaced by Alma Pöysti, who currently stars in the film Dead Leaves.

PERSON-AI

There was indeed a deep fake that consisted of replacing Jack Nicholson’s face with Jim Carrey’s face in a scene from The Shining. Or Harrison Ford’s Tom Selleck in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But this initiative goes even further as it extends to the entire film, which has been renamed Another person for the occasion.

While actors are still on strike in Hollywood, especially fighting over how studios can (mis)use their faces and voices thanks to artificial intelligence, this slightly provocative experiment from the Gothenburg Film Festival has everything to argue about. And maybe it will set a precedent.