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This monumental mid-nineteenth-century epic from Jan Troell charts, over the course of two films, a Swedish farming family’s voyage to America and their efforts to put down roots in this beautiful but forbidding new world. Movie legends Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, respectively portray Karl Oskar and Kristina, a couple who meet with one physical and emotional trial after another on their arduous journey. The precise, minute detail with which Troell depicts the couple’s story—which is also that of countless other people who sought better lives across the Atlantic—is a wonder to behold. Engrossing at every step of the way, the duo of The Emigrants and The New Land makes for perhaps the greatest screen drama about the settling of America. The film series is based on a series of four novels by the Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg. The novels are The Emigrants (1949), Unto a Good Land (1952), The Settlers (1956), and The Last Letter Home (1959).
Karl and Kristina Nilsson work on a farm in a cold and desolate area of 19th century rural Sweden. Growing privations, combined with increasing social and religious persecution, motivate the Nilssons and many of their neighbors to strike out for the United States. Following a treacherous ocean crossing and an equally grueling land passage, the emigrants find themselves in seemingly idyllic Minnesota.
A Swedish immigrant family struggles to adapt to their new life on the American frontier during the second half of the 19th century amidst civil war, native uprising and the lure of gold in California.