LOVE & JUSTICE
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BEETHOVEN’S REBEL OPERA: FIDELIO
The recently unveiled Love & Justice: In The Footsteps of Beethoven's Rebel Opera follows Candaele to Valparaiso, Chile. Here, the narrative of Beethoven's sole opera, "Fidelio," resonates deeply with the story of the Butoh performer María Belén Espinosa Peña and her murdered grandfather, Jorge Peña Hen. This film becomes a poignant bringing together of Beethoven's quest for love and justice and the harrowing yet inspiring tales of those impacted by Chile's 1973 coup and the years of political repression that followed.
“Some say that I must now choOse patience for my guide. I have done so. I hope my determination will remain firm. Perhaps I shall get better. Perhaps not. I am prepared.”
- LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, 1812
WATCH THE TRAILER
Examining the power of beautiful music and the dignity of bringing art into the world, Love & Justice is currently on a screening tour across the Western U.S. with a national release planned for 2024.
Love & Justice Reviews
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"Unique and beautiful piece! I think Beethoven would have appreciated what you did, which is to bring the eternal part of his work into the present. Bravo!"
Jan Swafford, Author of “Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph”
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"A very moving film. What a journey. And thank you for remembering our tragedy and our struggles."
-Ariel Dorfman, Author ‘Death and the Maiden’
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“Love & Justice combines the musical style with the cinematographic language of the great masters. The camera handling of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, the box of surprises of Citizen Kane, the ambivalence of fiction and reality of François Truffaut’s The American, but also the narrative and scenic skill of Peter Greenaway.”
José Blanco Jiménez , Film Critic, Chile
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"Intimate, moving—often painfully so. A lovely film."
– Marina Chicurel
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"A masterpiece - Love & Justice is thoughtful, beautiful and very important."
— Joan Rutkowski
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"Poignant, mysterious, risky, and brilliant."
— Ben Lamarca
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"Love & Justice proves that classical music can inspire and educate anyone. It’s not meant to be a rarified experience. Love and Justice is a moving film, with grand artistry on display."
– Jill Brooke, Telluride Daily Planet
BEHIND THE SCENES
On September 11, 1973, a military coup Chile deposed the democratically elected president Salvador Allende, installed General Augusto Pinochet, and unleashed years of vicious repression. Among those rounded up, imprisoned, and executed was Jorge Peña Hen, a composer and the conductor of a renowned children’s orchestra.
Forty-five years later, documentary filmmaker Kerry Candaele traveled to Valparaiso, Chile, to make a film about Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio. The opera is about a political prisoner, Florestan, unjustly held in a dungeon but ultimately rescued by his wife, Leonore, who has infiltrated the Prison by dressing as a man.In Valparaiso, Candaele assembles an orchestra and performers to stage portions of the opera, but he also meets an eccentric Butoh dancer named María Belén Espinosa Peña. In performance, she dresses as a man—an imprisoned musician—and plays out his final days “to rescue him from the Prison of forgetting”. The man is her grandfather, Jorge Peña Hen.
Struck by the similarities between Belén’s story and the story of Fidelio, filmmaker Candaele has created a swirling, poetic, and deeply musical narrative that weaves them together, along with Beethoven’s own search for love and justice.
The film is being released on the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup, and is dedicated to its victims.