Der TOD DES EMPEDOKLES - VERSION A

In \"The Death of Empedocles\" the Straubs bring to the screen a poet no one would dare imagine. Friedrich Hölderlin's \"Empedocles\" is adapted as a \"communist dream\" of life among equal people, peace and harmony with nature. Simultaneously, the film is a discovery of Sicily, its light and clearness, which has been haunting the Straubs for years. But the roar of the Etna merges with the distant thunder of the catastrophe of Chernobyl and the warning message of the film is addressed to all of us, \"children of the earth\". With \"The Death of Empedocles\" the Straubs have succeeded in creating one of the most beautiful and important, both dark and light, films in the history of cinema - if there really is such a thing as the history of cinema.