The legend of Faust, retold by a key Russian filmmaker, screened in 35mm.
Doctor Heinrich Faust goes too far in his search for knowledge in a free interpretation of the tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808) and the novel by Thomas Mann. The phantasmagorical film by Alexander Sokurov—the final part in his tetralogy on the destructive nature of power—premiered and won a Golden Lion at the Venice film festival in 2011.
If the first three parts of Sokurov’s tetralogy were focused on real people—Adolf Hitler (Moloch, 1999), Vladimir Lenin (Taurus, 2000), and the Japanese emperor Hirohito (The Sun, 2005), in the fourth one, he turns to the mythical figure of Faust. Although the German-language film that Sokurov co-wrote with his regular collaborator Yuri Arabov is nominally set in early nineteenth-century Germany, in fact, it takes the viewer to a grotesque and medievally dirty non-time.
Sokurov’s signature dreamlike and slightly off image is created by the five-time Oscar-winner Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and the sound design by Andrey Sigle, who also produced all of Sokurov’s recent films. The film stars the icon of the New German Cinema, Hanna Schygulla (The Marriage of Maria Braun), and the founder of the avant-garde theatre DEREVO Anton Adasinsky, who won a Nika Award (Russia) for his role of Mauricius/Mephistopheles.
Faust
Director: Alexander Sokurov
Russia, Germany, France, Japan, UK, Italy, 2011. 134 min.
18+