“Oh to Believe in Another World”: Kentridge’s Animated Journey Through Pain and Hope

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents “Oh to Believe in Another World”: Kentridge’s Animated Journey Through Pain and Hope.

A 60-minute animated collage meets a live orchestra and the choreography of William Kentridge: “Oh to Believe in Another World” is being performed at the Baku International Arts Festival in Azerbaijan. The Guardian calls it one of the most remarkable works of animation ever seen—a cinematic-musical Gesamtkunstwerk combining black humor with profound emotional depth.

If you are wondering whether an evening at the festival is more than an exhibition of film and music, the review has a clear answer: Here, images, dance and music merge into a single dramatic experience. It is about memory, grief and ideals, but also about the question of how people come to terms with historical violence.

What “Oh to Believe in Another World” Shows at the Festival

The format

In the piece, 71-year-old South African artist and filmmaker Kentridge does not work solely with drawn or animated characters. The roughly hour-long collage combines animation with live choreography. This makes the performance feel like an artistic organism in its own right: Movement, imagery and sound do not follow one another in sequence but interlock immediately.

The accompaniment is Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, performed live by an orchestra. This musical foundation is not merely a soundtrack. It supports the collage’s dramatic progression and adds another layer to the visual material. The Guardian calls the work a cinematic-musical creation that unites puppetry, dance and humor.

Why Shostakovich and Stalin Are at the Center

A dual historical connection

According to The Guardian, the performance at the Baku festival has a twofold occasion. On the one hand, it marks the 120th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s birth. On the other, the festival commemorates the composer’s reportedly unrequited love for his student, the Azerbaijani pianist and composer Elmira Nazirova, as well as their lifelong friendship.

Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony is closely associated with Stalin. It was premiered after Stalin’s death, although parts of the work may already have been composed before he died. This raises a historical question: Was the piece initially intended as a dramatic tribute to Stalin? The Guardian frames this carefully as a possibility, rather than a confirmed intention.

The review, by contrast, detects a contradictory emotional mixture in the music. There is fear and awe, but also disgust and a kind of hysterical reaction to the “bizarre energy” of Stalin’s destructive rule. At the same time, it sounds as though the music contains a sense of farewell to a great and terrible era, along with mourning for what was sacrificed during it.

This ambiguity is a central appeal of the piece. Kentridge does not turn the historical music into a blunt lesson. Instead, he collages images, characters and movement into an associative experience oscillating between black humor, absurdity and genuine grief.

Why the Piece Matters Above All as a Total Experience

Animation, dance and live music

The distinctive quality of “Oh to Believe in Another World” lies not in any single spectacular image. Its appeal emerges from the interaction of its elements. The hour-long animated collage appears to place disparate visual worlds side by side, while the choreography gives the characters an additional physical dimension. The symphony, in turn, prevents the collage from easily dissolving into a loose sequence of images.

This also explains why The Guardian describes the work as potentially “breathtaking animation” rather than simply classifying it as an animated film. Its effect comes from the interplay of artistic forms. Animation provides the surreal layer, dance supplies visible movement, and the music establishes the emotional and historical foundation.

For festival visitors, this means: You are not simply watching a film and then listening to music afterward. You are experiencing a performance lasting around an hour in which image, body and sound act together. It is precisely this fusion that makes the piece a special festival experience.

The Verdict: Black Humor About the Greatest Themes

According to The Guardian, “Oh to Believe in Another World” is a compelling collage about humanity, grief and idealism. It moves between comedy and tragedy without resolving one against the other. The black humor does not make the weighty subjects easier; it makes them more sharply visible.

Ultimately, this is a work that operates less through a polished narrative than through a feeling: There is loss, there is historical power, and there is hope for another world—at the same time as the question of whether that hope can make sense of the past. For anyone who wants to experience animation, dance and symphony at the Baku festival not as separate program highlights but as a deliberately conceived Gesamtkunstwerk, it is a worthwhile event.

Extra value for you: If you are still undecided about attending the festival, it is worth considering the entire performance rather than only individual videos or still images. It is precisely the combination of animation, choreography and a live orchestra that makes this work special.

Enjoy the performance—and allow yourself plenty of time for the collage shown online.