Antigone (1964)

Classical source material is boiled down its pure plot elements, a drama in nine minutes: In a war against Creon, one of Antigone’s brothers fights on the king’s side, while another is aligned against him. Both die. One receives a proper burial, the other is left to rot on the field. Antigone rebels against the king and seeks to bury the latter brother – whereupon she is walled in as punishment. Her betrothed Haimon subsequently jumps to his death, whereupon his mother Eurydice hangs herself in grief. As the soothsayer foretold, Creon can wrest no good fortune from this scenario, as he too is ultimately murdered. In the end there are six individuals dead, although the war is over. Director Ula Stöckl: ‘Antigone is a figure who taught me that there is always a moment in the life of every single individual where one has to decide completely on one’s own: this is as far as I’m willing to go, no further, and now I have to say “no”, even if it costs me my life. And with our German history of course that was always a question for me, where did this figure get the inner certainty, how did she know that, where did she get the courage, would I, Ula, have had that same courage too?’