We Have Many Names

Mai Zetterling directs and stars in this deeply personal study of a self-sacrificing woman reeling from her husband’s abandonment, told through flashbacks and fantasies. Zetterling, whose own marriage to David Hughes was falling apart when the film was made, drew on her experience—“I used all the pain and misery of the break-up of my marriage. It was a bitter medicine.” Zetterling took the film, which was originally conceived under the working title The Great Unwanted for the BBC, as part of UNESCO’s International Women’s Year, to Swedish Television, which wanted her to star.