Antigone in the Amazon

"There are monstrous things, but nothing is more monstrous than the human."On screen, the chorus intones its tragic song. A song that is a formidable diatribe against the protagonists on stage. Filmed shots and live footage respond to each other; the dialogue is eloquent. We are both in the heart of mythical Thebes and in the state of Pará, where the Brazilian Amazon jungle is disintegrating, plundered and irreparably destroyed by large industrial groups. And it is on this bloodless soil that Milo Rau has brought together Brazilian and European actors, musicians, indigenous activists and members of the Landless Movement (MST). And it is with their experience and knowledge, added to our Greco-Roman culture, that the Swiss director, director of NTGent and director-designate of the Wiener Festwochen, closes his "Trilogy of Antiquity" (Oreste à Mossoul and Le Nouvel Évangile) and reactivates the tragedy of Antigone. An Antigone embodied by Amazonian indigenous activist Kay Sara, alongside an ancient chorus made up of survivors of the military police's worst massacre against the MST movement in 1996. An allegory of political struggle and relentless resistance in the face of the implacable greed of a devastating modern world.