Friedrich Hölderlin

It is night and the road down by the river is deserted. Teenager Samuel gazes at the river Tejo intent on committing suicide. Elói, an old sailor, comes over to try and find out what the boy intends to do. Samuel invites him to come with him on his last dive into the river...

A teenaged girl is executed for going against a king's wishes and honoring her brother's death. (imdb)

Based on Friedrich Hölderlin's play about the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (c. 490 BC - 430 BC), who lived in the Greek colony of Agrigentum in Sicily. (sensesofcinema.com)

Jean-Marie Straub pushes this musicality of blocks to a paroxysmal extreme, mixing blocks of time ... , blocks of text (Malraux, Fortini, Vittorini, Hölderlin) and blocks of language (French, Italian, German), and from this ruckus emerges the history of the world, yes, History with a capital H, and from the same movement, the political hope of its being overtaken. So this is an adventure film, about the Human adventure, still one that is always, in the end, overtaken by Nature. (worldscinema.org)