Bergman: "Each time is the last"

"It was extraordinary and completely unexpected."

Anna is to feature the same characters as his classic Scenes From A Marriage filmed 30 years ago.

But Bergman, also known for his 1957 film The Seventh Seal, insists this is not a sequel.

Collaborator

"I needed two people I knew very well for this and I know Marianne and Johan very well," said Bergman of the characters in the earlier film who were played by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson.

Ullmann, who is Bergman's long-time collaborator and former lover, is to star in the film.

The Norwegian actress, the mother of one of Bergman's nine children, is now also a director, whose debut feature film Faithless received high praise.

Ullmann: Had a daughter with Bergman

In Faithless - a story based on the life of Bergman and writer by the director - Josephson played Bergman.

Production on Anna is set to start next year, but Bergman says he has no deadline and does not know when the film will start.

The idea for the production came when he was translating Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts.

Bergman promised that this would be his last production.

Last year he told Swedish newspaper Expressen that he was leaving the film industry calling it a "branch of butchery and whoring".

He said that he was not even moved by his own films anymore, and that producing another would be too physically demanding.