Number fourteen, home

When Frédéric Chopin died in Paris in 1849, his sister fulfilled the composer’s last wish and smuggled his heart back to his native Poland. There it was deterred in the Church of the Holy Cross. Guido van der Werve’s film Number fourteen, home takes this anecdote as its starting point. Structured like a classical requiem in three movements and twelve acts, the elaborate and complex film unfolds along the route of a 1,000-mile triathlon—swimming, biking, and running—retracing the path of Chopin’s heart from Warsaw back to Paris.

Dealing with key themes in van der Werve’s work—such as isolation, physical endurance, longing, and melancholy—this intricately composed film intertwines episodes from the artist’s own biography with the story of Chopin and tales about Alexander the Great, all held together by the artist’s immense athletic performance.