Man in Black

The 86-year-old Xilin Wang, one of China’s most important modern classical composers, lays himself bare. Not just physically—he enters the exquisitely lit stage of the Parisian Théâtre des Bouffes completely naked—but also emotionally. Even more than his body and voice, it is Wang’s music that speaks loudest in this documentary. He is regularly drowned out by the menacing, dramatic, chaotic sounds.

Wang was a promising student at the Shanghai Conservatory, where he was taught that “to compose music, first and foremost you need correct thought and a knowledge of Marxism-Leninism.” But in the early 1960s, Wang broke with Communist Party doctrine. It was a decision that would mark him for the rest of his life.

Both physically and mentally, he bears the scars of repression and torture, bearing witness to the dehumanization of an entire country. More than 60 years later, as an exile in Germany, he still has nightmares about the violence he endured in his twenties.