Set entirely on an empty stage and in the adjoining spaces of a theater, the film depicts the confrontation between the elderly director Henrik Vogler and the young actress Anna at the end of a rehearsal for a production of Strindberg’s *A Dream*. Joining them is the girl’s mother, Rakel—an actress herself and an overbearing presence—who reawakens memories, unresolved tensions, and emotional dynamics suspended between private life and the stage. 
Through a minimalist and focused narrative device, Bergman transforms the theater into a mental space, where the rehearsal becomes an opportunity to explore art, memory, and the relationship between desire, control, and vulnerability. The boundary between fiction and reality gradually blurs, to the point where the relationships between the characters and their stage personas become indistinguishable. 
*After the Rehearsal* thus emerges as a lucid and ruthless reflection on the actor’s craft and the power of performance, but also as a veiled self-portrait of Bergman himself, as he examines his own artistic past and the ultimate meaning of theater and cinema. 
An intimate and rigorous work—among the author’s most profound—that continues to exert a profound influence on the relationship between stage and image, between direction and performance.