Celebrated French director Olivier Assayas (Paris, je t’aime, Clouds of Sils Maria) recently penned an editorial, for the magazine Film Comment, on director Ingmar Bergman’s legacy. In “Where Are We With Bergman?” Assayas wrote, “I see [Bergman’s absence from contemporary cinema] as a terrible void,” adding that “[Bergman chose as his subject] what is most precious in the ontology of cinema: its capacity to represent the complexity of human experience, to face its contradictions and ambivalences, to look at what is simultaneously destructive and full of hope, transcendent and maddeningly trivial in humanity.”

We move away from Bergman when we move away from our dark side and the necessity to face it.

At the recent Toronto International Film Festival, Assayas sat down to share, on camera, his thoughts on Persona, a movie he describes as “absurdly important,” while adding that Bergman showed “that you could be both a great writer and a great filmmaker, meaning you could have the skills of a director and also be one of the great writers of your time.” Watch as the director discusses the magic of Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece.