Die Legende vom Nil

The Swiss painter Paul Klee (1879-1940), who believed his ancestors came from North Africa, traveled to Egypt in 1928. He visited Tunesia in 1914, together with August Macke. The light and colors there influenced him a lot. German documentary filmmaker Rüdiger Sünner travels through Egypt with Klee's diary in his luggage. This film essay shows Klee's paintings, sepia toned filmed sequences of early 1990s Egypt, and tells of old Egyptian myths (Osiris and his adventures in the underworld) from the Book of the Dead, stories that deeply inspired Paul Klee.