Love & Justice: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Rebel Opera

"A woman's courage and love is all."

Kerry Candaele’s second Beethoven film (after Following the Ninth) explores the composer’s only opera, Fidelio, through the lens of a contemporary political context: the long shadow of Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Jorge Pena Hen was a composer and conductor. He was also among the tens of thousands arrested and killed after the coup which brought down the democratically-elected socialist Allende government. Restaging Fidelio in an abandoned factory in Valparaíso, Candaele meets Pena Hen’s granddaughter, Maria, who dedicates her art form — Butoh dance — to memorializing her grandfather, and sees surprising echoes of the opera in her tale. Love & Justice has it all: Beethoven’s stirring music and singing, history, politics, but above all it’s an inspiring testament to the enduring power of creativity and artistic expression, even in the hardest times.