Opening with a starkly symbolic dream sequence, Wild Strawberries follows Professor Isak Borg as he journeys by car in the company of his daughter-in-law to collect an award from his former university. The trip occasions a series of reminiscences and reveries, as the ageing Borg revisits the scenes of his youth and reflects on an unhappy marriage.

Ingmar Bergman pays tribute to his forebears by casting great silent filmmaker Victor Sjöstrom as Borg, but strikes out for a new form of intellectual cinema characterised by probing into the nature of existence