Mai Zetterling

Acting May 24, 1925 Mar 17, 1994 (aged 69) Västerås, Västmanlands län, Sweden

Mai Elisabeth Zetterling ( May 24, 1925 – March 17, 1994) was a Swedish actress and film director.

She began directing in the early 1960s, starting with political documentaries and a short film called The War Game (1962), which was nominated for a BAFTA award, and won a Silver Lion at Venice. Her first feature film Älskande par (1964, "Loving Couples"), based on the novels of Agnes von Krusenstjerna, was banned at the Cannes Film Festival for its sexual explicitness and nudity. Kenneth Tynan of The Observer later called it "one of the most ambitious debuts since Citizen Kane." It was not the only film she made that would stir up controversy for its frank sexuality (early pioneer on voyeurism).

When critics reviewing her debut feature said that "Mai Zetterling directs like a man," she began to explore feminist themes more explicitly in her work. The Girls, which had an all-star Swedish cast including Bibi Andersson and Harriet Andersson, discussed women's liberation (or lack thereof) in a society controlled by men, as the protagonists compare their lives to characters in the play Lysistrata, and find that things have not progressed very much for women since ancient times.

64 Acting Credits

21 Crew Credits

Mai Zetterling

Acting

The Witches

Hidden Agenda

Torment

Music in Darkness

Knock on Wood

Only Two Can Play

Seven Waves Away

Danger Man

Frieda

Visions of Eight

Quartet

The Man Who Finally Died

Jet Storm

Studio One

Offbeat

The Third Man

A Prize of Gold

Piccadilly Third Stop

Sunshine Follows Rain

Portrait from Life

Prejudice and Pride: Swedish Film Queer

Iris and the Lieutenant

The Truth About Women

Faces in the Dark

Crew

Night Games

The Girls

The Hitchhiker

Scrubbers

Loving Couples

Visions of Eight

Amorosa

Love

Doctor Glas

The War Game

Chillers

We Have Many Names