Antigone the Docutragedy logo
TRAILER

Antigone the Docutragedy grew out of a small independent production of Sophocles’ Antigone, staged in Los Angeles in 1995.

WATCH TRAILER
EXPLORE THE STORY

Sacrifice

Conscience

Family

Silence is Betrayal

Justice

Defiance

———— INTRODUCTION
“The play remained the same. The world did not.“

A 1995 Los Angeles independent productionof Antigone, starring Mira Furlan, becomes thefoundation for a new cinematic work in whichancient tragedy, documentary testimony,and the perspective of three decades convergeinto a meditation on power, exile,media, memory, and moral choice.

Some works of art belong to the moment in which they are made. Others reveal their deeper, new meaning only with time.

Antigone the Docutragedy grew out of a small independent production ofSophocles’ Antigone, staged in Los Angeles in 1995. Directed by Goran Gajićand starring Mira Furlan, it was created in response to the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the rise of nationalism that forced many artists, including its creators, into exile. Rather than presenting Antigone as a classical text, the production treated it as a living story about its own time.

Thirty years later, the surviving recordings tell a different story. Without changing a single frame, they have become more than a record of a theatrical performance. They have become a documentary about the world that surrounded the production—about America, Hollywood, exile, the media, and the people whose lives continued long after the curtain fell.

Built around the restored performance and enriched with documentary material, Antigone the Docutragedy is neither a filmed play nor a conventional documentary. It is a feature film about how time can change the meaning of a work of art without changing the work itself.

The play remained the same.
The world did not.

— Los Angeles, 1995

Handwritten note

"Bury him. Whatever it costs."

Mira Furlan, Antigone

Los Angeles 1995

Genre

Hybrid Feature Film

Runtime

74min

Format

4:3 · Color

Language

English

———— SYNOPSIS
1995 Los Angeles production of Sophocles’ Antigone

Antigone the Docutragedy is a feature film built around a 1995 Los Angeles production of Sophocles’ Antigone, directed by Goran Gajić and starring Mira Furlan.

Created in response to the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the production approached Sophocles not as a historical monument but as a living work that could speak directly to its own time. Working from Deanne Stillman’s contemporary adaptation, it combined the ancient text with documentary voices and media imagery to create a dialogue between classical tragedy and contemporary reality.

Three decades later, the original production became the foundation for an entirely new film. Rather than documenting a theatrical performance, Antigone the Docutragedy uses it as its central document, placing it in conversation with history, documentary material, and the passage of time.

Nothing in the original production has changed. Yet everything around it has. Without changing the original1995 production, the film reveals how questions of war, nationalism, exile, political power, and individual conscience continue to echo across generations.

That is why the film is called Antigone the Docutragedy. Time transformed a tragedy into a docutragedy—not by changing the work itself, but by changing the world around it. The result is neither a filmed play nor a conventional documentary, but a new cinematic work in which tragedy and documentary illuminate one another.

———— DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
…I knew I wasn’t restoring a play. I was discovering another film.
Dir. Goran Gajic

When we staged Antigone in Los Angeles in 1995, we thought we were responding to our time. War had returned to Europe, nationalism was tearing lives apart, and Sophocles suddenly felt less like an ancient playwright than a contemporary.

We built the production on a tiny stage with extraordinary artists. We thought we were making theatre.

For thirty years, the recordings sat quietly in our garage.

Then I watched it again.

The play hadn’t changed. The world had.

What once seemed like the documentation of a stage production had become something else: a documentary about the world, about America, about Hollywood, about exile, and about the people who unknowingly left behind a record of themselves before history caught up with them. That’s when I knew I wasn’trestoring a play. I was discovering another film. In life, you often have to wait. Sometimes for centuries. Sophocles waited 2,500 years. Our production only had to wait thirty.

Antigone the Docutragedy is the result of that wait.

— Goran Gajić, Director

———— CREATIVE TEAM

Goran Gajiċ

Goran Gajić is a film and television writer and director whose work spans feature films, documentaries, theatre, and television in Europe and the United States. Over a career of more than four decades, he has explored the relationship between the individual and society, examining how personal choices are shaped—and often tested—by politics, history, and moral responsibility.

READ FULL BIO

Deanne Stillman

1995 Stage Adaptation

Deanne Stillman is a critically acclaimed writer and playwright. Her books include Twentynine Palms and Mustang, both named Los Angeles Times best books of the year; Desert Reckoning, winner of the Spur and LA Press Club Awards; and Blood Brothers.

READ FULL BIO

———— Official Trailer

The verdict is the story.

Set within a theatrical-documentary hybrid form, Antigone: The Docutragedy reimagines Sophocles' oldest question: what do we owe the dead, the living, and the truth? Mira Furlan plays a woman confronting the law of the state and the law of the family, and when the brother she loves is declared an enemy by the ruling power, Antigone takes a stand that will cost her everything.

Watch Full Trailer

1:14 · 4K · HDR

Genre

Hybrid Feature Film

Runtime

74min

Format

4:3 · Color

Language

English

Antigone the Docutragedy Promotional poster

Special Screening

Sarajevo Film Festival | SUMMER 2026

Dir. Goran Gajić

———— CAST

One tragedy.
Many voices.

Mira Furlan

Antigone

The daughter of Oedipus. She has chosen, and refuses to unchoose.

"I was born to love, not to hate."

Wayne Duvall

Creon

A ruler who mistakes order for justice, and obedience for peace.

The city is the king's — and the king is not to be argued with."

James Parks

Haemon

Caught between the father he owes and the woman he loves.

"It is no city at all, owned by one man alone."

Jillian Crane

Ismene

She loves Antigone. She wants her to live. It will not be enough.

"We are only women. We cannot fight men."

Anne Howard

Anne Howard first appeared onstage at the age of four in Carousel. NY Off-Broadway: Summertree, Baseball...

READ FULL BIO

Ellen Gerstein

Ellen Gerstein is an award-winning actress, writer, director, producer, and acting coach. Ellen Gerstein...

READ FULL BIO

John Prosky

John Prosky is an American actor and professor whose career spans more than four decades across theatre, film...

READ FULL BIO

Andrew Ascione

Andrew Ascione appeared in the originalLos Angeles production of Antigone before pursuing...

READ FULL BIO

Daniel Hutchison

Daniel Hutchison is an American actor whose work spans film, television, and theatre. He has appeared in...

READ FULL BIO

Gary Bairos

Gary Bairos was part of the original Los Angeles ensemble whose work has been preserved in Antigone...

READ FULL BIO

———— Gallery of Images

Fragments from the cutting room.

———— Premiere

Selected worldwide
Stay in the Story
Stay connected to the story.

Screenings, director's notes, and dispatches from the road — no marketing, no noise.

Great! We’ve received your information.

Goran Gajiċ

Writer & Director

Goran Gajić is a film and television writer and director whose work spans feature films, documentaries, theatre, and television in Europe and the United States. Over a career of more than four decades, he has explored the relationship between the individual and society, examining how personal choices are shaped—and often tested—by politics, history, and moral responsibility.

Born in Zagreb in 1962, Gajić graduated in Film Directing from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in 1989. During the 1980s, he worked as a journalist, filmmaker, and television producer before directing the documentary Victory Under the Sun and co-directing the cult feature The Fall of Rokenrol.

In 1991, amid the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the nationalist campaign directed against him and his wife, actress and writer Mira Furlan, they emigrated to the United States. There, Gajić continued his work as a director, helming episodes of Babylon 5, Oz, The Beat, Level 9, and Sheena, while developing independent film projects in both the United States and Europe.

In 1995, he directed a Los Angeles production of Sophocles’ Antigone starring Mira Furlan. More than thirty years later, he returned to that production and transformed its surviving recordings into Antigone the Docutragedy—a feature film built on the idea that time itself can become a creative force, revealing new meanings within a work of art.

Gajić lives and works between the United States and Europe.

Selected Filmography (Director)

  • Antigone the Docutragedy (2026)
  • Debt to the Sea (2019)
  • The Storks Will Return (2007–2008)
  • The Inner Circle (2005)
  • Oz (2000–2001, TV)
  • The Beat (2000, TV)
  • Level 9 (2000, TV)
  • Babylon 5 (1994, TV)
  • Dear Video (1991, Television Film)
  • The Fall of Rokenrol(1989, Feature, Co-Director)
  • Victory Under the Sun (1988, Documentary)

Deanne Stillman

1995 Stage Adaptation

Deanne Stillman is a critically acclaimed writer and playwright. Her books include Twentynine Palms and Mustang, both named Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year; Desert Reckoning, winner of the Spur and LA Press Club Awards; and Blood Brothers. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Independent, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Washington Monthly.

Her plays include Reflections in a D’Back’s Eye, a semifinalist for the Echo Theater New Play Competition and presented at the Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s 2026 New Works Festival; On Such a Winter’s Day; and Billy the Kid and Lee Harvey Oswald Praise Citizenship in the American Dreamtime, produced by Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

Mira Furlan

Mira Furlan (1955–2021) was one of the most celebrated actresses of the former Yugoslavia, whose career spanned theatre, film, television, and literature. A leading performer of her generation, she established an international career after emigrating to the United States in 1991 with her husband, director Goran Gajić, following a public nationalist campaign directed against her for opposing ethnic division during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Throughout her life, Furlan remained an outspoken advocate for artistic freedom, dialogue, and human dignity, refusing to surrender to the politics of nationalism and exclusion. Her integrity, both as an artist and as a public intellectual, became one of the defining characteristics of her life and work.

Alongside her acting career, Furlan was an accomplished writer. She wrote the stage play Dok nas smrt ne razdvoji (Till Death Do Us Part), which continues to be performed in Belgrade, the essay collection Closing Sale, and her acclaimed autobiography Love Me More Than Anything in the World, published posthumously.

Antigone occupied a special place in her artistic life. In Goran Gajić’s 1995 Los Angeles production, she portrayed Sophocles’ heroine with extraordinary emotional and moral clarity. More than thirty years later, that performance became the heart of Antigone the Docutragedy, standing not only as a remarkable interpretation of a classical role, but also as a testament to an artist whose life embodied the values Antigone defends: conscience over obedience, humanity over ideology, and truth over fear.

Wayne Duvall

Wayne Duvall is an award-winning American actor whose career spans more than four decades across film, television, and the stage.

His work includes Apollo 13, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Lincoln, Prisoners, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Billions, The Blacklist, and Broadway productions including 1984 and Swept Away.

Known for his emotional honesty and remarkable versatility, Duvall has become one of America’s most respected character actors.

James Parks

James Parks is an American actor whose career spans more than three decades in film and television. His credits include Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2, Planet Terror, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Twin Peaks: The Return, Justified, and CSI.

In the 1995 Los Angeles production of Antigone, he portrayed Haemon. His performance returns in Antigone the Docutragedy as part of the restored original production.

Jillian Crane

Jillian Crane’s career has taken her from many of America’s leading regional theatres to New York stages, film, and television. Her theatre credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Firebugs at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Duchess of Malfi at New York Theatre Workshop, Dinner with Friends at the Vineyard Playhouse, Edward II at The Actors’ Gang, and productions at The Huntington Theatre and Trinity Repertory Theatre. Her screen work includes Alexander Payne’s Election, Campbell Scott’s Hamlet, The Great New Wonderful, Netflix’s Spinning Out, and guest appearances on Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Practice, and Homicide: Life on the Street.

Today she serves as President and CEO of the First Responders Children’s Foundation, leading a national organization that provides scholarships, financial assistance, counseling, and emergency support for families of first responders. Reflecting on Antigone, Crane describes the original production as one of the defining artistic experiences of her career and welcomes the opportunity for new audiences to encounter it through the film.

Anne Howard

Anne Howard first appeared onstage at the age of four in Carousel. NY Off-Broadway: Summertree, Baseball Wives, The Other Genius LA Theatre: Antigone, Quilters, An Ideal Husband, Dialectics of the Heart Film: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, The Weather Man, Prince of Darkness, Blue Streak, The Collection, April Rain, Dead of Winter, Blue-EyedButcher, The Dresden Sun, PLEA-Best Supporting Actress Guest Star: Castle, Criminal Minds, Private Practice, Desperate Housewives, Monk, Nip/Tuck, Cold Case, ER, UNfabulous, House of Cards, etc.NBC Soaps: Another World-Nicole Love, Days of Our Lives- Kimberly Brady.

Anne is in 1518:THE DANCING PLAGUE, Aug 24- 29, 2026, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Ellen Gerstein

Ellen Gerstein is an award-winning actress, writer, director, producer, and acting coach. Ellen Gerstein has spent more than four decades working across theatre, film, and television. A lifetime member of The Actors Studio, she studied with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler and has become equally respected as a performer, filmmaker, teacher, and script analyst.

Her screen credits include The Morning Show, Shameless, Friends, Seinfeld, Law & Order: True Crime, Venom, Raging Bull, and numerous independent films. As a filmmaker, she wrote, directed, and starred in the internationally acclaimed short film Come Away with Me.

In Antigone the Docutragedy, she appears as Tiresias, whose warning to Creon stands at the moral center of Sophocles’ tragedy.

Andrew Ascione

John Prosky is an American actor and professor whose career spans more than four decades across theatre, film, and television. A classically trained performer, he holds a BFA in Theater from Rutgers University and an MFA in Acting and Directing from California State University, Long Beach. He iscurrently Professor of Acting at the Savannah Collegeof Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia.

His extensive screen career includes recurring roles in True Blood and Scandal, as well as appearances in The West Wing, ER, House, Grey’s Anatomy, The X-Files, Criminal Minds, and Perry Mason.

His film credits include Bowfinger, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Hulk, Straight Outta Compton, and Ouija: Origin of Evil. His stage career includes work at Arena Stage, the Guthrie Theater, Pasadena Playhouse, the Geffen Playhouse, and the Antaeus Theatre Company.

Alongside his professional acting career, Proskyhas devoted many years to teaching acting andShakespeare, including work with underservedand incarcerated young people in Los Angeles. In Goran Gajić’s 1995 Los Angeles production of Antigone, Prosky performed the roles of the Guard and Messenger, performances now preserved in Antigone the Docutragedy.

Andrew Ascione

Andrew Ascione appeared in the originalLos Angeles production of Antigone before pursuing a distinguished professional career outside the performing arts. Looking back on the production more than three decades later, he recalls reconnecting with director Goran Gajić through this film as an opportunity to revisit an important artistic experience that has remained part of his life. Today he is a semi-retired forensic accountant, the father of three daughters, and a recent grandfather.

Daniel Hutchison

Daniel Hutchison is an American actor whose work spans film, television, and theatre. He has appeared in acclaimed television series including Babylon 5, Ally McBeal, and L.A. Law, as well as independent films and stage productions, earning recognition for his versatility and understated screen presence.

In Goran Gajić’s 1995 Los Angeles production of Antigone, Hutchison portrayed Creon’s Adjutant, bringing disciplined restraint and quiet authority to a character at the center of the state’s machinery of power. More than thirty years later, his performance became part of Antigone the Documentary, where it contributes to the film’sexploration of authority, conscience, and the enduring relevance of Sophocles’ tragedy.

Gary Bairos

Gary Bairos was part of the original Los Angeles ensemble whose work has been preserved in Antigone the Docutragedy.