How to make a film to accompany a live orchestral performance of a symphony? This question preoccupied Kentridge whilst creating the immersive film Oh to Believe in Another World, which accompanies Dmitri Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. “The film becomes a way of looking at artists and the Soviet Union,” explains Kentridge, who explores the complex relationship between Shostakovich and the regime. Alongside Stalin and Lenin, the film also features the composer Elmira Nazivora, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and the actress Lili Brik, all depicted as puppets in a cardboard set. These puppets then served as the basis for the costumes designed by Greta Goiris, worn by the performers in the film. On 18 September 2026, the Belgian National Orchestra will perform Shostakovich's Tenth alongside Kentridge's film. 

In 1827, Franz Schubert completed the song cycle Winterreise, in which both the lyrics and the music manage to capture, as delicately as a snowflake, the deeply moving emotions of the main character, a solitary traveller. Kentridge has enhanced the 24 songs with animations and collages that are projected live during the concert. The black Indian ink, so characteristic of his work, conveys a sense of the ‘Weltschmerz’ (world-weariness) evoked by the cycle. Some of his favourite themes are explored here and harmonise perfectly with Schubert: the life of the tree or the (solitary) wanderer. Matthias Goerne, a world-renowned Schubert interpreter, sings this cycle, steeped in despair, at Bozar on 14 April 2027.