Songs of Hope and Despair
1.10.–1.10.2026.
From Rotterdam to Rijeka: Chto Delat presents the Rijeka premiere of Songs of Hope and Despair as part of their residency at Kamov.
1 October at 6:00 pm — Art-kino Croatia, Krešimirova 2, Rijeka
A film by Chto Delat International
Songs of Hope and Despair
Duration: 82’
Songs of Hope and Despair unfolds as a collective journey through history, myth, and lived experience. Performed by a diverse community of migrants from Russia and their friends, the film stages an encounter between fairy-tale figures, folk memory, and the unfinished struggles of social emancipation. Its protagonists —Bundschuh, Fish, Foxtail, Rainbow, Dead Drummer, Muse-Leaving-Germany, and others — inhabit a world of absurd quests, manipulated by a trickster-magician (played by Manuel Muerte) and accompanied by the haunting voices of Wilder ChorYander.
Inspired by Werner Tübke’s monumental painting Panorama of the Peasants’ War, the film reimagines fragments of Germany’s revolutionary past in the ruins of a present marked by displacement, war, and repression. Staged in April 2025 in Hettstedt, a former mining town in Saxony-Anhalt, the film unfolds as a strange “road movie” or “magical table game.” A group of oddly dressed characters push forward in search of a miracle, failing to recognize the extent to which their fate is manipulated. Yet, in their fragility, they embody the persistence of hope, the longing for justice, and the fragile spark of solidarity.
A recurring leitmotif is the 16th-century farewell song “Dunkle Wolken” (Dark Clouds), first performed by Wilder ChorYander and later transformed by the film’s characters as they carry a cart symbolizing the Clouds of Apocalypse. This chorus of mourning and resistance connects past and present, reminding us of the cyclical nature of despair — but also of the stubborn endurance of hope.
None of the film’s participants are professional actors. Instead, each performer shaped their character through personal experience, imagination, and reflection on the contradictions of our time. Their presence brings authenticity, playfulness, and vulnerability to the collective process.
Songs of Hope and Despair is mourning and reckoning, a tragicomic meditation on manipulation and resistance, betrayal and solidarity, despair and fragile joy. It insists on commemorating acts of resistance, even when history repeats itself in cycles of failure.
The film was made in 2025 and had its world festival premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2026.
Admission is free.
The film will be screened with English subtitles.
During the Chto Delat collective’s residency, two additional screenings of Songs of Hope and Despair will take place:
28 September at Multimedia Institute – MaMa, in collaboration with the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom / WHW, and 2 October in Ljubljana at the Moderna galerija.
The Rijeka programme is organised by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, as part of the Kamov Residency Programme, in collaboration with Art-kino Croatia and the research project REVENANT: Revivals of Empire—Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation, based at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka.
The programmes in Zagreb and Ljubljana are organised in collaboration with the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom / WHW and Moderna galerija in Ljubljana.