 The French painter Edouard Manet painted four canvases depicting the execution in 1867 of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. This short dramatic film evokes the artist s studio and the events of Maximilian s death, using a single, uninterrupted shot to present the artistic thought process through the eyes of the painter. The narration, written by the film s director, takes the form of an imagined interior monologue, presented in voice-over style in French and German with English subtitles. It alludes to the narrative, historical and visual texts that Manet drew upon to form his four versions of the painting.