• Director(s):

    PASTERNAK (IOSSIF)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE FRANCE

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2011

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French, Portuguese

  • Rights:

    NON-THEATRICAL, TV, VOD, DVD, INTERNET

Sergueï Segeyevich Prokofiev's masterpiece, the ballet Romeo and Juliet, nearly never made it to a public performance. Like its composer, the ballet has a turbulent history, fluctuating between joy and tragedy, glory and despair.

Having spent a long time living away from his native Russia, and drawing his inspiration from a fertile Western background, Serguei Prokofiev returned with his wife and children to his homeland, which by then had become the Soviet Union. It was an unsettling return: he no longer recognised his country. In return, the Soviet public were slow to welcome his ballet Romeo and Juliet: dance theatres refused it, and the dancers could not understand the rhythm. The ballet disturbed people, and was only performed four years later... to rapturous applause.
The work echoes its composer's stormy life, which was made up of both great successes and deep pain. Sergueï Prokoviev fluctuated between compositions that extolled the regime, and free creations, such as the score for Serguei Eisenstein's final film, "Ivan the Terrible", which was censored.

Like a Shakespearean tragedy, this film orchestrates the history of his work, his love life, and the political history of the country, and reveals an implicit constant struggle between the artist and the Soviet regime, between creative freedom and restricting ideology.