An 84-minute documentary portrait of the composer in Viennese emigration — director Benoît Jacquot. Premiere on ARTE.tv 17 October 2026.
Documentary 'Sylvestrov: Vienna's Silence' (84 minutes, in colour and partly black-and-white) releases on the ARTE.tv platform on 17 October 2026. Director — Benoît Jacquot, César laureate for the film 'Le Jardin de Lune' (1995). The film resulted from 14 months of work by a French-German-Ukrainian crew (PointduJour Productions / WDR / Suspilne) in Vienna and partly in Berlin and Kyiv from January 2025 to March 2026. The film's structure has three 'acts': 1) Sylvestrov's arrival in Vienna from Berlin (December 2022), apartment search, first months of adaptation; 2) the composer's daily life in Vienna — morning walks in Stadtpark, regular meetings with writer Serhiy Zhadan, Café Mozart on Albertinaplatz; 3) the creative process — composing 'Litanies for Lost Cities' in the Vienna apartment, telephone conversations with friends in Ukraine. The film contains 9 exclusive interviews: with Sylvestrov himself (4 hours of footage total), composer Helmut Lachenmann, conductor Roman Kofman (also in emigration), pianist Alexei Lubimov, daughter Marianna Sylvestrova. A particular core is a 12-minute episode about Sylvestrov writing 'Prayer for Ukraine' in March 2022, which became a hymn of European support for Ukraine. The film received an early Berlinale 2026 Generation 14plus award.
