Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has died at the age of 89.
Bergman, famous for films such as Fanny and Alexander, The Seventh Sealand Wild Strawberries, died peacefully in his home on Faro Island in the Baltic Sea, his daughter Eva Bergman said.
The director, one of the most important figures in modern cinema, won three Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film: The Virgin Spring(1961) Through a Glass Darkly(1962) and Fanny and Alexander(1984).
Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman photographed in 2000
He was nominated for Best Original Screenplay five times, for Best Director three times and for Best Picture once.
He also directed dozens of plays for theatre and radio.
He began his career as a script writer and at one time directed soap commercials to escape unemployment. His break into the film world came in 1955 with Smiles of a Summer Night, a sophisticated comedy of manners set in turn-of-the-century Sweden. It won a prize for best comedy at the 1956 Cannes film festival.
He gained international recognition with the 1956 film The Seventh Seal, set in the Middle Ages, in which a crusader searching for God and the meaning of life plays chess with Death. It won the jury prize at the 1957 Cannes film festival.
Films like Wild Strawberries, Scenes From a Marriageand Fanny and Alexander, set in the clear light of a rugged North, gave Sweden a reputation for melancholy and elevated Bergman into one of the masters of the modern cinema.
His self-proclaimed retirement from cinema followed the making of Fanny and Alexander. Produced in three- and five-hour versions, the film won four Oscars in 1984, including best foreign film.
Bergman was appointed director of Sweden's national theatre, the Royal Dramatic Theatre, in 1963.
A collection of his work was last month added to the UNESCO store of history's greatest archives.
Bergman was married five times. Four marriages ended in divorce, while his last wife, Ingrid von Rosen, died of stomach cancer in 1995. He had nine children.
He settled on Faro in the southeast of Sweden after shooting seven movies there. Each summer the island hosts a celebration of his life and films.