The Seven Last Words

As a filmmaker, musician and composer, Kaveh Nabatian doesn’t want to choose between music and film. He’d rather combine both disciplines as far as possible. For instance in this multidisciplinary project, for which he cooperated with six other Canadian filmmakers and the British Callino String Quartet. It’s based on the commissioned composition The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross (1787) by Joseph Haydn – a piece that is a special favourite around Easter and which grippingly expresses the state of the suffering Christ on the cross. Each of the directors in this omnibus film provides their own very personal view of the themes in Haydn’s piece: forgiveness, redemption, abandonment and reunion. Nabatian himself made the intriguing introduction and the concluding 'earthquake', which frame the seven short films. These films are very varied in genre and style: fiction, documentary, experimental, magic realist and sometimes also soberly filmed – intimate and personal. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)