ZELLE: Wenn es dunkel wird

Winter. High up in the mountains, in a small hut, a lonely woman wanders about. She is suspected of murdering her children. Vague memories of her interrogation in a police cell cling to an ominous experience. Faced with a multitude of questions, the woman seeks clarity in her confused head. Where are the children? Where are Konrad and Marlen? Repetitive voices speak to her as a thick fog lifts in the high mountains. Symbols from her life lose their meaning and she finds herself in a world between dream and reality. Finding back what has never been lost becomes increasingly difficult. Time passes. The fog thickens. Clarity dissipates.

For ZELLE: Wenn es dunkel wird, British-Chinese composer and director Jamie Man 文珮玲 worked with Swiss author and librettist Peter Stamm. What binds them is the search for what is real, for the truth beneath the reality. With influences from the dark surrealism of David Lynch, the narrative montage techniques of Jean-Luc Godard and the Japanese Nō theatre, ZELLE: Wenn es dunkel wird explores the ambiguous boundaries between fact and fiction.