Allarts Enterprises

Identical twin zoologists lose their wives in a car crash caused by a white swan. They become obsessed with the death and decay of animals, and develop a strange and unusual relationship with the driver of the car, a woman who is now an amputee.

As an anonymous man, Fermin leaves his underground hideout in the subway. The dictatorship in the country is followed by democracy, but the bright light of it blinds Fermin: he is displaced. At the police station, his anonymity is complete and he doesn't remember his own name. He is fitted with a past of 13 years of illegal political opposition from the police archives. When he keeps silent about the crimes of the dictator regime, he will be a free man. The woman he promised to marry, doesn't recognize him anymore, and thinks he is dead.

A few hours spent together give a young woman and an older man a new perspective on life.

Peter Greenaway presents this "Commentary in one hundred parts" on Drowning by Numbers (1987), discussing and analyzing many of the film's more intriguing features.

Peter Greenaway remembers his first meeting with Rotterdam Film Festival director Hubert Bals.