Jon’s life is inspired by the Greek myth of Oedipus. As a child, he was disowned by his parents, thereby losing his family and the family name. After one stormy night in the mountains of Greece, the paramedic Elias, named after the prophet, and his wife, took him in. Reaching maturity, the young man commits a murder and ends up in a sun-faded detention facility. Jon grows close with the supervisor Iro and gradually loses his sight as he relives his memories again and again. As the light and the meaning of words fade and slowly disappear, Iro consoles her lover with an offering of baroque music: Monteverdi, Bach, and Pergolesi.

An anti-psychological tragedy born from the spirit of music, the film is a deconstruction of an intricate Greek myth and a play by Sophocles. A classicist of the Berlin School, Schanelec’s latest film received the Silver Bear award for best screenplay at this year’s Berlinale. The film travels a familiar path in pursuit of the author’s idiosyncrasies: the topic of alienation and visual paradoxes. The structure of the plot rewrites what the viewer already knows in a crooked mirror, and the visual sequences are akin to Greek new wave cinema. The arrow of time draws a connection between the 80s in Greece and modern-day Berlin, between birth and death, creation and loss. Somewhere – in this postmodernity of mythology – the viewers will find their own way to experience the film and will be reminded of a certain kind of pain that can only be brought about by someone close.

This film is screened as part of a cooperation with Lācis, lauva un zars.