Exclusive: Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson, now best known as the director behind beautiful, taut features like Let the Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, wrote to Swedish screen legend Ingmar Bergman sometime in the early 2000s with an idea. Bergman’s response was characteristically colorful.

“What the hell is this? What do you mean?” Bergman told Alfredson.

Alfredson had told the Persona filmmaker that he wanted to remake Faithless, the 2000 feature Bergman had written about an imaginary woman who recollects her painful experience of adultery to an aging filmmaker. The pic played in competition that year in Cannes and was directed by Bergman’s ex-wife, actress Liv Ullmann.

“This was long before everyone was producing remakes, so it was a very unusual question, especially for Bergman,” Alfredson said.

Fast forward to February 2024 and Alfredson is deep into an edit of a contemporary TV adaptation of Faithless he has...