The Saddest Music in the World (2003)

Winnipeg, Canada: during the Great Depression. A legless beer baroness (Isabella Rossellini) has come up with a business plan. She has discovered that people drink more beer when they listen to sad music. She decides to organise a competition in which she invites people from all over the world to determine what is the ‘saddest music in the world’. Chester, a failed Broadway producer, decides to take part on behalf of the United States. But to do so, he must successfully conceal the fact that he is actually from Winnipeg and is not American at all.

The Saddest Music in the World could have been made by no one other than Guy Maddin. In his characteristic style, inspired by German Expressionism, he presents a compelling satire on the commercialisation of emotion.