The best Ulf Johanson’s drama movies

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.

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.

In the midst of a civil war, former violinists Jan and Eva Rosenberg, who have a tempestuous marriage, run 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.

An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past on a windy island. Between midnight and dawn, he tells his wife about his most painful memories.

Dr. Jenny Isaksson is a psychiatrist whose temporary position at a mental hospital offers only modest responsibilities. With her husband out of the country for a seminar and her daughter at camp, Jenny moves in with her grandparents, expecting a relaxing few months. But it isn't long before unpleasant memories of her childhood, the sudden appearance of strange apparitions, and a near-rape push this otherwise stable woman to the very edge of sanity.

Maggi meets David after having missed her train, and they spend the night together. Penniless, the young lovers break into a summer cottage. The owner, Håkansson, offers to rent it to them, but he has an ulterior motive. By living together, they have to face their pasts and deal with the meddling neighbors and authorities.

A small-town piano teacher is shocked by the arrival of her foster daughter's real mother, whose young lover soon follows and causes further disruption.

For her feature film directing debut, actress Mai Zetterling turned to Agnes von Krusenstjerna's controversial masterpiece of Swedish feminist literature, "The Misses von Pahlen," an intense and personal seven-part novel that has been likened to the great works of D.H. Lawrence. As three pregnant women from different backgrounds wait to have their babies in a hospital in Stockholm at the outbreak of the Great War, they relive their childhood and youthful experiences via individual flashbacks. Drawing on the classic Ingmar Bergman style of Swedish filmmaking and collaborating with many of his favorite actors as well as the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Zetterling had produced a powerful fusion of personal emotional drama and a commentary on the role of women in a society in moral decline.

Because of an accident at a military drill the recruit Bengt loses his eyesight and becomes blind. He gets to live with relatives in the countryside and meets the young Ingrid. She falls in love with him but Bengt's bitterness also makes him blind to her attentions.

Set against the backdrop of the 1909 general strike, Hjördis is employed as a housemaid in a wealthy Stockholm family.

The rich young man Teddy Anker invests his money in the theater in the beginning of the 1920s. Whatever he does becomes a success. He falls in love with a dancer, Karin. He decides to put up a show with Karin as the leading lady, but for the first time one of his shows becomes an economic disaster.

Set in medieval times about the cursed Moonshield family. The young knight Erland Moonshield fall in love with a gypsy enchantress, Singoalla, he meet in the forest.

Somewhere sits two men, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a man named Godot. Internationally acclaimed Swedish TV dramatized version of the classic stage play.