A ‘hellhole’ was how a certain president described Molenbeek. That was in early 2016. Stefan Hertmans was writing his Antigone in Molenbeek at the time. He had used Antigone as a central character in his work before this, but now he was placing her in the midst of contemporary multicultural society.

Here, Antigone’s name is Nouria and she is a law student. One of her brothers had turned radical, gone to the Middle East, fought for ISIS and now has died in a terrorist attack. Nouria is determined to bury the remains of her dead brother. When authorities refuse to release his body, Nouria breaks into the forensic centre where the remains are held, but is caught and arrested. From then on, everything goes wrong.

Guy Cassiers is directing actress Ikram Aoulad in a staging with visual images while the text conducts a dialogue with Dimitri Shostakovich’s last string quartet (No. 15), in which the composer says farewell to life.