AN OPERA HAUNTED BY THE PRESENT

I’m not here to teach a music history class, but a little background goes a long way when it comes to Ai Weiwei’s Turandot, especially if opera isn’t your thing or if you are new to the work of artist and activist Ai Weiwei (pronounced “eye way-way”). That said, the film stands on its own as a powerful piece of art, absolutely worth your time.

Turandot is Giacomo Puccini’s final work, famously left without an ending when the Maestro died in 1924. Set in an “Orientalist” version of ancient China, it centers on the glacial Princess Turandot who keeps her suitors in check with a game of deadly riddles, kind of a life-or-death early dating platform. Enter Calaf, the hopeful prince drawn to the impossible task of thawing a heart carved from ice. He solves her puzzles, then turns the tables with a riddle of his own because she is a sore loser and he has a conscience. In order to win, Turandot has Liu, Calaf’s innocent loyal servant, tortured and killed. It is a fable of cruelty composed by Puccini between two World Wars, not exactly a time overflowing with optimism. Turandot is the embodiment of tyranny, cold, distant, and untouchable; the Chorus is the voice of the compliant, misinformed masses; Calaf is the dreamer who tries to change things for the better; and Liu is the martyr. After Puccini’s death, composer Franco Alfano was brought in to write a Disney-like finale, and it has been the same ever since.

Almost one hundred years later, Carlo Fuortes, Rome Opera House superintendent, asked renowned artist Ai Weiwei to direct a Turandot for the Roman theater, and he made it into one of the most radical reinterpretations of a classic in recent memory. Weiwei, however, had no interest in easy resolutions, and in his staging Alfano’s ending was deliberately discarded, leaving the finale ambiguous and unresolved as Puccini left it. He taps into the composer’s vision of imperial lust and unrestrained power, but his reinterpretation is deeply personal. As a child, he was banished with his father, the renowned poet Ai Qing, during Maoist purges. Decades later, Ai himself would be detained by the Chinese government for his outspoken activism. He also worked as an extra in Zeffirelli’s gaudy Turandot at the MET in 1987, and these kinds of stories are not footnotes to his Turandot but its foundation.

Co-written with Michele Cogo, Silvia Pelati, and Eugenio Fallarino, and edited by Emanuele Bonomi, Ai Weiwei’s Turandot is a layered, cinematic essay that interweaves Weiwei’s operatic directorial debut (finally staged in Rome in 2022) with a global tapestry of crisis and commentary. Through director/co-writer/DP Maxim Derevianko’s attentive lens, the documentary becomes more than a record of an opera’s creation. The orchestra itself, conducted by Ukrainian Maestro Oksana Lyniv, is shadowed by the war in Ukraine, a conflict that started just before the opening of the opera, and the documentary addresses it through Lyniv’s own reflections and pain. Alongside this are echoes of the tragic refugee crisis, the lingering trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic (which repeatedly stalled the production), and Weiwei’s own history of censorship, exile, surveillance, and artistic resistance. The Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, which killed almost 70,000 people — the event that made him a dissident because he dared to talk about it; the Umbrella Movement that emerged during the 2014 Hong Kong protests to fight for free and fair elections; and his imprisonment in 2011 for 81 days — they all flicker through the work like ghosts.

Equally intimate is Weiwei’s collaboration with legendary choreographer Chiang Ching, whose long history with him lends the production its elegance and just the right amount of theatrical gravitas. These creative and personal entanglements form the film’s emotional core. We watch Weiwei in rehearsals debating, deciding, second-guessing — sometimes with childlike wonder, sometimes with unshakable boldness. The documentary reveals not just how theatre is made but how Weiwei makes it. His costumes and sets, crafted by the teams of seasoned artists like Anna Biagiotti and Andrea Miglio, are rich with symbolism: a diamond encrusted moth costume for Turandot; a big frog on Calaf’s back; riot gear and hazmat suits; missiles; and CCTV cameras everywhere — all evoking a dystopian absurdity and a genuine menace in a place where repression is disguised as convenience and conformity as affirmation.

Derevianko adopts an unobtrusive documentary style, allowing the viewer to become both witness and participant in the unfolding creative process. He thrives on juxtaposition: sweeping wide shots of the opera’s apocalyptic set are followed by intimate moments backstage; real footage from Ukrainian war zones, refugee camps, and COVID-era hospitals is woven into the opera’s fabricated dystopia, and these intercuts draw a direct line between Puccini’s imagined cruelty and the world’s real one. Emanuele Bonomi’s non-linear, associative editing echoes Weiwei’s own thematic layering: scenes are organized to reflect emotional arcs rather than narrative ones.

Puccini’s score melts the frost with soaring arias, and none is more iconic than “Nessun Dorma,” the ultimate power ballad, fully capable of thawing glaciers. Whether or not opera is your thing is beside the point; this is a documentary about making art, and its urgency is undeniable because it speaks to the world we inhabit now. And, please, dismiss the protests of opera traditionalists; this Turandot is not concerned with opulent sets, riddles, or even redemption. It is a requiem for those lost to disease, war, exile, and for the fading ideals of freedom and free speech, casualties in their own right. Artist Ai Weiwei and conductor Oksana Lyniv are not offering resolution, they are bearing witness. They have already lived what much of the Western world is only beginning to confront. And in an age addicted to spectacle and anesthetized by silence, that may be the lesson we most need.

photos courtesy of Incipit Film/La Monte Productions

Ai Weiwei’s Turandot
Incipit Film/La Monte Productions
documentary | unrated | 78 minutes | Italy/USA | 2025
opens in Los Angeles at Laemmle Monica Film Center, 1332 2nd St in Santa Monica
September 26 – October 2, 2025
Q&A with filmmakers following evening screenings opening weekend
for more info and screenings, visit Ai Weiwei