Faust

Alexander Sokurov completes a cinematic tetralogy of films, the previous three were based on historical figures: Adolf Hitler (Moloch, 1999), Vladimir Lenin (Taurus, 2000), and Emperor Hirohito (The Sun, 2005), by delving further into the nature of power with his own unique take on Goethe's Faust. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival 2011 Sokurov's Faust is not adaptation in the usual sense but rather a 'reading of what remains between the lines'. Faust here is a thinker, a mouthpiece for ideas, a transmitter of words, a schemer, a daydreamer. An anonymous man driven by simple instincts: hunger, greed, lust. Sokurov asks us to question how this literary character informs our understanding of those previously studied abusers of power. How an unhappy life can lead some to be seduced by monstrous ideologies.