The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) (1971)

First time watch for me. Truly engaging epic saga that takes its time and focuses on the minutia. Eye-opening look at the class inequalities that led to immigration in mid-nineteenth century Sweden. Director Jan Troell's directing (sometimes employing docu style) seems far…

Sean Baker

I don’t think anyone has ever loved Minnesota as much as these people. But seriously, this was such a great film. The first few minutes had me worried, as there was little dialogue and a lot of people wandering around, swinging, drowning cats, and whatnot that I thought…

Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine

Jan Troell’s “The Emigrants” is a journey to the New World carried by the winds of necessity, rather than promise. Troell’s three-hour epic is the first of two films following a group of late 19th century agrarian Swedes as they depart their impoverished native land for a…

theriverjordan

i love the swedish title of this, UTVANDRARNA, it's such a daunting and massive word to look at and pronounce. as was the process of getting myself ready to watch this for the first time; huge but tiny, epic but glacially so. 200 minutes of intimacy, pain, desire, hope,…

Sam

*Twitch Redeem by Seventh_Persona.* On my search of 100/100s. The largest Swedish superproduction at the time, the one that showed off the Academy Award's insecurity and lack of organization by nominating this film for different categories in two separate years, the…

Edgar Cochran ✝️🍋

It's difficult to put into words to begin to describe Jan Troell's masterful epic of "the great emigration" as seen through the perspective of a small community of Swedish farmers. I haven't felt the need to label a film as a masterpiece of world cinema in quite some time…

Robert Beksinski

Watching The Emigrants (and The New Land) may be the only time I can feel the warmth of the sun through my screen. A film unlike any other in its power to absorb, to transfigure, to transpose. This is what cinema is to me. The Emigrants is a film that takes you on a journey…

Ford H

Jan Troell’s sweeping Swedish epic is a masterclass in quiet realism. Based on Vilhelm Moberg’s novels, the film follows a poor farming family led by the stoic Karl Oskar (Max von Sydow) and his wife Kristina (Liv Ullmann) as they leave famine-stricken 19th-century Sweden…

André G. 🇵🇹

From the many great films that I was lucky enough to catch for my first time through all of 2016 so far, Jan Troell's The Emigrants is quite possibly the best of the bunch. The scope of emotion which Jan Troell places within an epic detailing the difficulties of immigration…

Jaime Rebanal 🇵🇸