‘Diego: The Last Goodbye’ Director Sebastián Alfie Plans Viktor Ullmann Biopic Following ‘The Kaiser of Atlantis’ (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Ed Meza @edmezavarIn his new documentary, “The Kaiser of Atlantis,” Argentine director Sebastián Alfie tells the story of composer Viktor Ullmann’s chamber opera, about a tyrant bent on waging endless war – written in 1943 in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín) – and, more than 70 years later, a new production of the work in Madrid.Alfie plans to follow up “The Kaiser of Atlantis” — which premieres at the Malaga Festival — with a biopic about Ullmann and the two years he spent imprisoned in Terezín.The director first saw the opera by chance in 2006 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. “When I read in the playbill that it had been written in a concentration camp, questions began to arise that are the germ of the documentary.

Is it possible to make music in those circumstances? Were they murdered for the meaning of the work? And the most important, how is it that no one knows this story, a testimony of horror that could well be compared to the diary of Anne Frank?” “The Kaiser of Atlantis” also revolves around composer and conductor Kerry Woodward, who rediscovered Ullmann’s manuscript in the early 1970s and conducted the first production of the opera in Amsterdam in 1975.The opera tells the tale of mad emperor who sets out to wage universal war until there are no survivors, only to offend Death with his blood-thirsty plans.

Refusing to take part, Death goes on strike. By declining to take souls, he provides humanity with immortality, nullifying the Kaiser’s war of destruction.The work has sadly gained renewed relevance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.“The film took seven years to finish,” says Alfie. “Within a week of getting to a broadcast version, Putin invaded Ukraine.