The anniversary edition will open with Return to a Strange Land by director Olga Malířová Špátová. This poetic documentary follows internationally renowned choreographer Jiří Kylián in a creative process with his lifelong muse and dancer Sabine Kupferberg. The film’s unifying thread is a choreography by Kylián that emerges spontaneously before the camera. Although he has created numerous choreographies for Sabine over the decades, now, at the age of 79, he appears alongside her as a protagonist for the first time. Together, they look back on more than fifty years of artistic collaboration and reflect on the meaning of life, the passage of time, ageing and disappearance. The film was shot on Terschelling, an island in the northern Netherlands that holds symbolic significance for Sabine and Jiří. It is associated with the 1970s, when they both emigrated to the Netherlands. The film’s central expressive elements are its powerful visual cinematography and music by Leoš Janáček, Claude Debussy, Ludwig van Beethoven, Tōru Takemitsu and Arne Nordheim, composers whose works Kylián has choreographed throughout his career. Archival footage woven throughout the documentary traces their collaboration from 1975 to the present.
“I am fascinated by Jiří Kylián’s choreography, through which he explores relationships and human life. His boundless and exceptional sense of humour, so characteristic of his work, never ceases to surprise me. Equally remarkable is his kindness—or perhaps kindness comes naturally to someone of such stature? Through their art, Sabine and Jiří give audiences wings. They strive to bring optimism into life and ease the burden of the human condition,” says Olga Malířová Špátová about the film.
