Tom Wheatley Agon Original Soundtrack

AGON is the directorial debut of Giulio Bertelli. It follows a triptych of female athletes as they prepare and then competein LUDOJ 2024, a fictional Olympic Games, in their personal disciplines - judo, fencing, and rifle shooting. Informed bythe historical figures of Cleopatra, Joan of Arc and Nadezhda Durova, these women are portrayed against the political,social, technological and physical contexts that dominate the highest level of sports competition and performance.AGON explores a contemporary account of the contradictions of these sports, which began as peacetime practices forwar, as their disciplines are institutionally sanitised, recast as wholesome global entertainment, and ultimatelydematerialised altogether in new digital arenas.The events at LUDOJ are conducted not in sports arenas but on soundstages, with no live audience. These spartanspaces are populated only by athletes, sports officials, and film crew, capturing every audio-visual layer of information.Within this environment, every mat crash, sword clash and gunshot is experienced in exacting detail.Tom Wheatley's score began as a conceptual mirror to this. He took three musicians, each with a singular approach totheir instrument, each instrument having a language of articulation that relates to each sport: percussion for judo, cellofor fencing, saxophone for rifle shooting. Added to this were claustrophobic analogue electronics, and bagpipes, torepresent a state beyond competition: war. The rich, detailed signals from these players underwent extreme processinglive in the studio, at times moving the music into a grey area between score, sound design and foley."I saw a material parallel between the sportsperson and the musician. That you have these tools which you carry throughlife, which hold complex histories of use. These techniques and traditions are studied, and combined with contemporarytechnologies to unlock new potentials. As Alex Sokolov is to her gun, Jean-Luc Guionnet is to his saxophone.From this model sprung many ideas, which lay the foundation for the score: applying the gestural language of the fencingepee to Ute's bow; the 'tuned air' of both the rifle and the saxophone; taking the judo concept of barycentre and applyingthat to a form of rhythmic gravity with Seijiro. It was a rich seam"- Tom Wheatley"Where realism and fiction are blurred in the world of AGON, Tom accomplished the same for the score, obfuscating theboundary between the acoustic landscape of the film and the music, respecting the theoretical framework of the filmitself."- Giulio BertelliAGON premiered at Venice Film Festival 2025, was awarded the Luciano Sovena Award for Best IndependentProduction, and the FIPRESCI Award (International Federation of Film Critics). It is a MUBI/Match Factory production.