A WINTER’S JOURNEY

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Franz Schubert wrote Winterreise at just 31, shortly before his death. Almost 200 years later, it remains one of the world’s most performed and enduring classical song cycles.

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For the first time, Winterreise is adapted as a 90-minute narrative feature film, combining Schubert’s music with live action and cutting-edge 3D animation. Told almost entirely without dialogue, the film follows a young poet’s journey through love, rejection, war and loss.

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Bavaria, 1812. Expelled from the town he briefly called home after the woman he loves chooses security over their passionate relationship, the POET sets out alone into the winter landscape. Haunted by memories and visions of THERESE, he journeys through snowbound forests, devastated battlefields and the majestic Alps, moving between past and present as his grief threatens to overwhelm him. Finally, amid the sublime beauty of the mountains, he accepts his fate: as a wanderer, an outsider and an artist.

The film’s story is told visually, with virtually no dialogue. Its visual language embraces the 19th-century Romantic imagination, drawing on the period’s fascination with nature, sublime landscapes, longing, solitude and the supernatural, while reimagining these qualities through contemporary cinema, live action and cutting-edge 3D animation.

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A Winter’s Journey is a radical marriage of classical music and cinema: a timeless story of love and loss brought to the screen through live action, animation and immersive sound.

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The film is accompanied by an innovative live exhibition model, with Schuen and Heide performing Winterreise live during screenings. These events can take place in cinemas, concert halls, galleries, museums and outdoor spaces, creating a major cultural event while opening the film to new international audiences.

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With an internationally acclaimed creative team and a cast whose work spans major cinema and theatre, A Winter’s Journey offers both a distinctive cinematic experience and a new way of experiencing one of the world’s great musical works.