ARCHIVES 2015 / Les Idiots

Through improvisations and extrapolations, Kirill Serebrennikov and his actors of the Gogol Center offer an updated version of Lars von Trier's The Idiots, retaining its economy of means and its pared-down aesthetics. Set in the Moscow of today, it follows a group of youths who decide to upset decorum and modesty by letting their inner imbecile take over.While Lars von Trier's characters belonged to a Danish society known for its calm and tolerance, Kirill Serebrennikov's encounter a people whose standards aren't quite as flexible. Focusing on this contrast between very strict conventions and the rejection of the rules of propriety, the Russian director brings “idiots” and “non-idiots” face to face on the stage, in order to question the actual role absurdity plays in human and social relationships, not only in Moscow but also everywhere else. In a society where any perceived behavioural failing can lead to anger and violence, Lars von Trier's initially amusing and idealistic experiment takes a turn for the dangerous, acquiring an inevitably subversive significance.

Kirill Serebrennikov was born in 1969 in Rostov, in southeast Russia. Originally destined to a career in physics, in 1992 he finds himself celebrating his graduation in the school theatre. In 2001, he directs Vassily Sigarev's Plasticine at the Dramatic Art and Direction Center Theater in Moscow. His shows – among which Mark Ravenhill's Some Explicit Polaroids, Maxim Gorky's The Petty Bourgeois, Bertold Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, Mikhail Bulgakov's Zoyka's Apartment, and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra – thereafter play at the Pushkin Drama Theatre, at the Sovremennik Theatre, and at the Moscow Art Theatre. Kirill Serebrennikov has also directed many operas in such theaters as the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky and the Komische Oper Berlin. He received an award in 1999 for his work in television, and has worked as a director for the cinema since 1998, winning the Best Film award at the International Rome Film Festival in 2006 for Playing the Victim. He participated in the main competition of the Venice Film Festival with Betrayal (Izmena) and in the Locarno Film Festival with Yuri's Day (Yuriev Day). Since 2005, he has been the artistic director of the "Territory" International festival of modern art, as well as the artistic director of the new Gogol Centre since its reopening in Moscow in 2012. He is the artistic director of the new Gogol Centre, which reopened in Moscow in 2012.

Lars von Trier directed The Idiots in 1998, following the rules of Dogme 95. This movement, whose manifesto he wrote with Thomas Vinterberg, director of Festen, included two other Danish directors, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring, and rejected the technological and commercial tendencies of modern cinema to focus on the sobriety and economy of means they thought would help bring it back to its essence. Masquerading as a documentary, The Idiots is a fiction that follows the experiment of a group of Danish youths determined to do away with the stupidity that surrounds them by letting their “inner idiot” show.