Dekalog

«What, in your innermost being, is right and what is wrong? What is a lie and what is the truth? What is honest and what is dishonest? And what sort of attitude should one have to this?», asked the film director Krzysztof Kieślowski and the lawyer Krzysztof Piesiewicz in 1983 when they began to develop the internationally-acclaimed cycle of films «Dekalog», whose ten episodes each examine one of the Biblical commandments in the light of the secular present. Within a social panorama they portray situations that are universal, yet deeply private and personal, ones «that are fictious but could occur in anyone’s life»: moments where lifelong plans are suddenly jeopardized and where people’s relationships with their fellow human beings are radically put to the test. Economic recession, social division and the emerging protest movement provide just as much of a background to the action as the absence of a God who might provide humanity with support in facing the great puzzle of life.

«I haven’t got anyone I can ask what I should do.»

The Spanish opera and theatre director Calixto Bieito, Artistic Director of the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao since 2017, returns to the Residenztheater with his version of «Dekalog». Out of this film material he will develop a new form of narrative that re-examines the relationship between traditional values and contemporary reality, between art and actuality, and – in the spirit of Kieślowski – question the moral disquiet of the present.