A Land full of Heroes is a play based on the experiences and the books of the German/Romanian writer Carmen-Francesca Banciu. In 1990, she arrived in Berlin, leaving Bucharest behind after the revolution. Her life’s journey is marked by rebellion: against the rigidity of the education received, against the ideological control of the party, against the limitations of artistic freedom. The experience of Carmen-Francesca Banciu traverses the collapse of the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, and is characterised by the constant search for a new world, a new Europe. Was the Berlin of the late 1980s and early 1990s the mirage of a new European vision?

Halfway between journalistic research and theatrical re-imagining, La Conquesta del Pol Sud recreates in 2019, her compelling Bucharest-Berlin trip made in 1990. The play is coproduced by the University of Birmingham, with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Theatre La Cité, Theatre des Doms, Forum Jacques Prévert, Theatre Jean Vilar, La Conquesta del Pol Sud.