Wagner is not a reference to the German composer, but to the enormous hydraulic press at which Elena, wonderfully played by Ernestina Schinova, spends her days in a factory. The film describes a day in her life, and an important one to boot. Her great dream becomes reality: a committee has allocated her a flat after ten years, on hire purchase. On this chilly November day, she is going to look at her future property. The long-expected happiness must have benumbed her spirit and reduced her resistance: in the empty apartment, she falls asleep on the spot. That night she wakes up feeling hungry. Roaming around the empty apartments, looking for a piece of bread, she meets other strange inhabitants.Wagner is about imaginary ideals and dreams that are forced onus by the society we live in and which we abide by for want of better. The director is convinced that the struggle to realise these dreams turns us into slaves who think they are living and fighting for an ideal. Elena becomes bogged down in false values that have been forced on her and make her forget her own dreams. In this way she also forgets the aim of her own personal life.Wagner emerges as a parable about an absurd system that also after the collapse of real existing Socialism looks as if it is going to lead its own slightly mutated life.
