Die tote Stadt

In the organizer's words:

After the death of his wife Marie, Paul lives a secluded and isolated life in his apartment. He only has contact with his friend Frank and Brigitta, who organizes his household. But when Paul meets Marietta, a dancer on the street who looks remarkably like Marie, his life, which has been marked by grief, takes a turn for the worse: As Paul tries to make Marietta look more and more like his deceased wife, the inner conflict between reality and wishful thinking takes up more and more space. Marietta initially plays along with the game, but does not allow herself to be restricted in her independence and freedom.
In 1920, when he was just 23 years old, Erich Wolfgang Korngold created Die tote Stadt (The Dead City), a clever play on coping with grief, combining dream and reality. While the narrative levels are inextricably intertwined, Korngold developed a finely thought-out score that declares "dream work" to be a musical principle. His overwhelming, colorful instrumentation turns the story of Paul and Marietta into a symphonic trip of a momentous encounter.
With The Dead City, director Ilaria Lanzino focuses on a realm beyond the threshold - a post-mortem descent into the world of a woman who took her own life. After the sudden loss, those left behind are left with questions that they cannot let go of. At the center is Paul, whose search leads him into the depths of an intangible truth: Who was the woman at his side - and what about her remained hidden from him while she was alive? Between memory and hallucination, longing and illusion, a multi-layered intimate play about loss, mysterious closeness and the impossibility of ever knowing the other completely unfolds.