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Starring Lil Dagover, Rudolph Klein-Rogge
Directed by Fritz Lang

Tickets: $25/$15 concession
Film: digital presentation of restored film

Duration: 114 minutes

Live music: accompanist Mauro Colombis

Klaus Krischok, Director, Goethe-Institut Australien

A pleasant change of pace to end the day’s sessions is this hauntingly beautiful gothic fantasy, full of rich images of medieval Europe and the exotic Orient. Written and directed by Fritz Lang, one of Germany’s leading filmmakers who later also found success in the United States in the Film Noir genre of the 1940s, it is his most artistic and unusual creative work, and won him international recognition.

Visually enthralling and mysterious, Destiny is also a deeply moving love story about a young woman’s desperate attempt to reclaim the life of her fiancé whose death had come too soon. Transcending boundaries of this world and other realms, she confronts the man who represents death and attempts to bargain with him for the life of her beloved.

In the course of making this deal with Death and Destiny, she is transported to three separate realities: old-world Persia with the charm of the Arabian Nights; Renaissance Venice and ancient China with all its rich traditions, but each setting containing the same tragic fate of lovers separated too soon.

More than an escape to a world of fantasy, Destiny captures the audience’s attention with its theme of death, which often seems destined or planned, beyond our control, but promises a solution because the young woman firmly believes that ‘love is stronger than death’.