Exsultate Project, a Frankfurt-based production company has partnered with the Helio Arts Streaming Platform to release the short film “Obscura Nox.”

The short film will be a modern retelling of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” in which a woman is cloistered in a prison of her own making until a mysterious stranger shows her a way out. The short film features Mozart’s “Exsultate, Jubilate” and new music by Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi with original Latin text.

Mezzo-soprano and Obscura Nox creator and performer Julia Dawson performs on the film and notes, “The human mind has an incredible ability to craft its own experience. I wanted to create a fantastical exploration of someone moving from an external focus on screens and media to an inward focus and how, paradoxically, this allows them to engage more fully with the outside world.”

The production was a trans-Atlantic collaboration between New York director Mary Birnbaum, Atlanta Ballet’s choreographer-in-residence Claudia Schreier and a Frankfurt-based cast, orchestra and crew.

“Obscura Nox” also stars dancer Evie Poaros and features cinematography by Thilo Jäger. The chamber ensemble that performs was led by violinist Guillaume Faraut and included musicians from the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken, the Staatstheater Darmstadt, and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.

The short film will be available on HelioArts.com late October.