The Serebrennikov Case – How Stuttgart Opera's Hansel And Gretel Fought For Artistic Freedom

Hanna Fischer's documentary, a production of South West German Television in association with the Film Academy of Baden-Württemberg, observes a unique experiment from the stage rehearsals right up to the premiere: How can you stage a production, when the director has been prevented from completing it for political reasons? The Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov was meant to have opened the season at the Stuttgart Opera with the fairy-tale opera “Hansel and Gretel”. But the head of the Gogol centre in Moscow has been under house-arrest since August 2017. The film-maker Hanna Fischer accompanied the Russian director in Ruanda and Stuttgart before he was arrested.