“This is the first time I’ve talked about David”: Isabella Rossellini on celebrating David Lynch at the Stockholm Film Festival

There were several film festivals courting Isabella Rossellini this year, hoping she’d be up to present a retrospective on the films of her dear friend and collaborator, the late David Lynch. Lucky for us, The Stockholm Film Festival won out. “I was asked to go to other countries, but I chose Stockholm so I could come here,” she says, noting that it’s a “beautiful city”. “It’s the city where my mum was born. Yesterday, when I arrived, I went to the cemetery to bring a little candle to my grandparents, who I’ve never met. Nobody’s here to bring them anything.”

She’s speaking, of course, of her mother, film icon Ingrid Bergman and her parents, Justus Samuel Bergman and Friedel Bergman. Though Rossellini was born in Rome (her father was Italian film director Roberto Rossellini), she remains deeply connected to her Swedish roots. “When I come to Sweden, generally I go to Fjällbacka, because my mom had, with my stepfather, an island off the coast of Fjällbacka,” she says, referring to theatre producer Lars Schmidt. As a child, Rossellini spent idyllic summers on the island.

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