Professional mourners, funeral songs and the origin of tragedy

In all the places we filmed Behind the Sun we found professional mourners who made us listen to their ancestral songs - songs of prayer for the salvation of the dead, songs of praise for those who have passed on. Similar songs, recorded by Beto Villares in Minas Gerais, are part of the soundtrack of the film, created by Antonio Pinto (composer of the score for Central Station).

The inclusion of scenes with mourners into the film wasn't by chance - again, this was influenced by Ismail Kadaré. Nietzsche advanced the thesis that Greek tragedy has its origin in Dionysian festivals. Kadaré asserts that tragedy is an extension of another form of ritual, that of the funeral songs sung by professional mourners at burials.

In his books Eschyle ou le Grand Perdant and Dialogue avec Alain Bosquet Kadaré reminds us that the grave of the dead man and the space around it are at the same time the raw material and the first scene of tragic theater. The main character, the dead man, is between two distinct states of being - life and death. Since he is no longer able to speak for himself, others speak for him. This duty falls to the first professional actresses who, according to Kadaré, are precisely the mourners. "Their laments belong to the realm of acted-out reality, like the ancient chorus would function later on in Greek theater. Even today in Greek, the word "actor" is translated as "hypokrites". It is a word that fits like a glove the professional mourners who cry for the dead that aren't their own.

These reflections are spoken in respect of an ordinary funeral service. But when the dead man is the victim of a vendetta and the killer is obligated to participate in the burial and the funerary meal of his victim, as happens in Behind the Sun, we are in the realm of tragedy expressed in its totality."

On one hand, blood that must be avenged, killings and outrages that will never be forgotten. On the other, the desire to overcome death. It's about this clash that the film tries to speak.