Mai Elizabeth Zetterling (1925–94) is among the most exceptional postwar female filmmakers. Born in Sweden, she lived in England and France for most of her life, making her directorial debut in 1964 with the Swedish art film Loving Couples after a fraught transition from working in front of the camera as a successful actress.
Critics have compared her work to that of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, and Federico Fellini, but Zetterling had a distinct style—alternately radical and reactionary—that straddled the gendered divide between high art and mass culture. Tackling themes of sexuality, isolation, and creativity, her documentaries, short and feature films, and television works are visually striking. Her oeuvre provoked controversy and scandal through her sensational representations of reproduction and motherhood.
Mariah Larsson provides a lively and authoritative take on Zetterling's legacy and complicated position within film and women's history. A Cinema of Obsession provides necessary perspective on how the breadth of an artist's collected works keeps gatekeepers from recognizing their achievements, and questions why we still distinguish between national and global visual cultures and the big and small screens in the #MeToo era.

An insightful guide to the films, genres, and cultural motifs that define Nordic cinema past and present.

The Intellect Handbook of Nordic Cinema offers a comprehensive overview of cinema in the Nordic region—Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sápmi. While each nation has distinct cinematic traditions and media histories, they also share many institutional and thematic features. A key example is the reliance of film production across all five countries, and in Sápmi, on various forms of government support.

Focusing primarily on feature films, the volume also addresses documentaries and animation, situating Nordic film production within today’s evolving media landscape where television and streaming services act as both partners and competitors. Combining detailed case studies with thematic explorations, it broadens understanding of genres such as occupation dramas, comedies, disaster movies, and children’s films while offering in-depth examinations of recurring cultural motifs and themes, including nature, nationality, sexuality, and digital piracy. With contributions from leading scholars, this handbook provides an essential reference for anyone seeking to understand the diversity, commonalities, and global relevance of Nordic cinema.