Viennale-Trailer 2023

Elizabeth Pinard—one of the three women in Pedro Costa’s AS FILHAS DO FOGO, where she was filmed walking beside a wall of lava—reappears alone in this new musical short film commissioned by the Viennale as this year’s trailer. In a stunning close-up worthy of a Dutch painting, her face is turned towards the darkness, and the circular shape of her headdress, which is set against a cloudy sky illuminated by a full moon, evokes the radiance of religious iconography. But this may as well be an eclipse, as she sings a cappella about solitude, abandonment and the end of all things, borrowing words from Brecht’s 1939 play Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, which were set to music by Brecht’s close collaborator Hanns Eisler and translated to English by Eric Bentley, who sung them on a 1964 track called On Suicide. Another teaser from Costa’s upcoming musical feature film, the song is, like all songs, an exercise in drastic concentration, something for the memory to come back to, an endless, self-sustaining loop. Across only two minutes, it’s as if three celestial bodies have aligned to articulate a universal plea against the plight of the oppressed and call forth our utmost fortitude. (V23 Catalogue, Antoine Thirion)