This article analyses the attitudes toward death and attempts to find reconciliation with life in four films by Ingmar Bergman (Eva; The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries; Cries and Whispers). The films are related to Nietzsche’s philosophy of life, the Swedish intellectual tradition of ”faith in life” (Ellen Key, Pär Lagerkvist) and the earlier tradition of ars moriendi. They are interpreted as responses to a new historical and existential situation characterized by secularization and the loss of legitimacy of earlier Christian frameworks and conceptions of death and life. As opposed to the general tendency in early post war culture to avoid addressing death as a personal problem, Bergman’s films persistently confront the viewer with finitude and emphasize the importance of death as an integrated dimension of life. At the same time, they also present attempts to find reconciliation with life under new existential conditions, without reference to gods or a transcendent afterlife. Central aspects of this art of dying (and art of living) include to confront the painful sides of one’s own life history in order to change and to reconcile with oneself and one’s closest before it is too late, to become conscious of one’s limited life time and to use it for something meaningful with regard to other people, as well as to try to adopt an attitude of gratitude rather than an attitude of self-absorbed discontent.