Documentary about filmmaker, author, director, and performance artist Christoph Schlingensief and his last major project, building an opera village in Burkina Faso. What was initially planned as a festival theater soon developed into a more ambitious idea, and in addition to the theater, a school, a hospital, and living quarters for teachers and nursing staff were also planned. Beginning with the search for a suitable building site, the film also recounts the difficulties encountered during the work and Schlingensief's advancing cancer.
Direction
Dahrendorf captures collapse without exploitation.
Production
The village itself—half-built, defiant, heartbreaking.
Director
Sibylle Dahrendorf
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Schlingensief was Germany's most notorious provocateur—he once staged Hamlet with actual neo-Nazis. This was supposed to be his redemption arc.
The opera village still exists, barely. Schlingensief died in 2012; Aino Laberenz, his widow and the film's emotional anchor, kept fighting for it until 2021.
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