When Depeche Mode: M hits cinemas worldwide on Oct. 28, including screens across Czechia, it will offer more than a live concert experience. The film captures the legendary band’s Mexico City performances from their Memento Mori world tour, blending music with meditative reflections on mortality.
Directed by Mexican filmmaker Fernando Frias, Depeche Mode: M draws a poetic link between the band’s 2023 album Memento Mori—Latin for “remember you must die”—and Mexico’s cultural embrace of death as a natural part of life. The release marks the group’s first concert film since the passing of founding member Andy Fletcher in 2022, giving it an added sense of reflection and loss.
For Czech fans, the event also recalls the band’s enduring relationship with Prague—a city that has long played a symbolic role in their history and imagery, from their groundbreaking 1988 concert to later iconic photoshoots by Anton Corbijn.
A cinematic journey through sound and mortality
Shot during three sold-out shows at Mexico City’s Foro Sol Stadium, Depeche Mode: M combines electrifying live footage with documentary scenes that explore the meaning of death and remembrance in Mexican tradition.
Frias, whose acclaimed feature I’m No Longer Here won ten Ariel Awards including Best Picture, brings an authorial eye to the project. His approach intertwines the visual intensity of stadium performances with intimate cultural imagery—creating what producers call “a sacred meeting place where pain, memory, joy, and dance converge.”
The film also captures the live power of Memento Mori, the band’s fifteenth studio album and their first recorded after Fletcher’s death. Songs like Ghosts Again and Wagging Tongue reflect on loss and resilience, themes that resonate deeply within the film’s narrative. These new tracks are interspersed with classics such as Enjoy the Silence and Never Let Me Down Again, performed before more than 200,000 fans over three nights.
Distributed internationally by Trafalgar Releasing and in Czechia by Aerofilms, the film will screen in standard and IMAX formats for a limited time starting Oct. 28. For Frias, who said he was drawn to the “dialogue between music and mortality,” the collaboration offered a rare chance to merge Depeche Mode’s aesthetic with Mexico’s visual and spiritual culture.
A lasting connection to Prague
Few international acts share as long and storied a connection with Prague as Depeche Mode. Their first Czech concert, held in March 1988 at Prague’s Sportovní hala, took place under the shadow of the communist regime—at a time when Western bands were rarely allowed to perform. The concert, organized almost by accident after another artist canceled, drew some 15,000 fans and is remembered as a pivotal cultural moment.
Despite official skepticism, the event was peaceful and even praised in the Communist daily Rudé právo for its “perfect sound and light play” and for inspiring “a mixture of enthusiasm and peace of mind.” That night, Czech fans dressed in black filled the hall, signaling a quiet cultural revolution that predated the political one by more than a year.
Since then, Depeche Mode have returned to the Czech capital for 11 shows, including their massive 2023 concert at Letňany Airport, attended by tens of thousands. Fletcher himself maintained a close bond with the city, visiting Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery and Kafka’s grave in 1988 during Anton Corbijn’s famous photo sessions for the book Depeche Mode: Strangers.
Tickets to Depeche Mode: M are now available through the concert film’s official website.
