Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman dies at 89

Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman has died, local media reported today.

He was 89.

Bergman died at his home in Faro, Sweden, Swedish news agency TT said, quoting his daughter Eva Bergman.

He died a peaceful death, she told TT. The date of the funeral has not yet been set, but will be attended by a close group of friends and family, TT said.

Through more than 50 films, Bergman’s vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years.

Bergman, who approached difficult subjects such as plague and madness with inventive technique and carefully honed writing, became one of the towering figures of serious filmmaking.

He was “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera,” Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988.