Return to a Strange Land
original title: Navrat do nezname zeme
2026, 72 min., color, Czech-English-German
COUNTRIES: Czech Republic, Netherlands
PRODUCTION : BUDGET : 606 234 euro
CAST
Jiří Kylián, Sabine Kupferberg
CREW
Director s : Screenplay : Olga Malířová ŠpátováCinematographer : Olga Malířová Špátová
Producers : Jiří Kylián, Carmen Thomas, Michal Sikora, Viktor Tauš
COMMENTS
FESTIVALS:
DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
In 2016, I met choreographer Jiří Kylián in the Italian city of Ancona while working on the short dance film Scalamare. Jiří directed the film and created the choreography, while my husband, Jan Malíř, and I worked on the cinematography. Since then, we have maintained a friendly connection, and the idea slowly emerged to capture his vital message in a feature film.
The lifelong bond between Jiří and his wife Sabine Kupferberg is the main theme of the film for me. Jiří himself says that he was not a good enough dancer to realize his ballet dreams, so he became a choreographer. His wife Sabine has been by his side for fifty years. She is his ‘speaker’. Through her dance, she can express his views on the world. She fulfills his dreams with reverence and grace.
Jiří Kylián, together with the exceptional dancer Sabine, give wings to their creations. They aim to lighten the burdens of life. Jiří himself says that the theater is like a ship where people board as passengers. They will never be the same as when they arrived. They have moved forward. This is not a classic film portrait. The film will be conceived as a film essay.
The main expressive medium is the camera. It will mirror the poetry and dynamism of the dance. The filmed scenes strive to capture moments both sincere and authentic, as well as stylized and absurd.
Another equally important expressive medium is music, both classical and composed. One of the pieces is Beethoven’s last string quartet. The acoustic atmosphere of the setting will also express Jiří and Sabine’s views on the world.
Archives of famous ballets, in which Sabine Kupferberg often danced over the past fifty years, will be used creatively, not merely as a showcase.
A significant element of our film will be humor, which runs through the work of Jiří Kylián and Sabine Kupferberg. But there will also be moments of genuine and poignant emotion. Creation, love, and reflections on the meaning of our actions.
SYNOPSIS
In this nostalgic and yet dramatic work, choreographer Jiří Kylián addresses a multitude of themes concerning our very existence as well as the passing of time and our final moments. But mainly it is concerned with the colorful madness of life. His feeling for tragicomic situations is ever present. The working title of this film was “Sehnsucht”. It is a beautiful German word meaning “Longing to be addicted”.
Jiří created many choreographies for his lifelong partner and performer Sabine Kupferberg. The film centers on the creation of his “final work”, and for the first time in his life, he appears alongside Sabine in this film as a protagonist.
It is shot on the island of Terschelling, off the coast of the Netherlands, the country to which Sabine and Jiří moved in 1975. The landscape of this island is extraordinarily magical and symbolic. In many scenes of the film, we will observe how the landscape changes in the unique light which is so very typical for this island, reflecting the fleeting nature of existence, the boundary between life and death.
All artistic creations produced by Jiří and Sabine since 1971 are witnesses of their lifelong personal relationship. They will always try to uncover something often hidden in the deep corners of our souls, something immensely valuable and ephemeral – something we need to be aware of….