Amid the awe-inspiring landscapes of the Moroccan desert, the myth of Oedipus plays out, where the fated boy’s willful blindness to his nature unleashes a cataclysmic reckoning. Meanwhile, a prologue and epilogue set in twentieth-century Italy bring the legend of Oedipus into the modern day.

Following The Gospel According to Matthew, Pier Paolo Pasolini turned to another classical text for this deeply personal take on Sophocles’ immortal tragedy. Hopping from Morocco to Bologna for his first film shot in color, Pasolini fashions a hugely ambitious, three-part epic of modern mythmaking.