Depeche Mode: the docu-film "M" is coming to cinemas – Watch the trailer

Diretto dal regista Fernando Frías e presentato in anteprima al Tribeca Film Festival 2025, arriva nelle sale di tutto il mondo in 4K e audio 5.1 dal 28 al 30 ottobre “Depeche Mode: M”, il film concerto che intreccia le riprese dei tre show sold out al Foro Sol Stadium di Città del Messico, accompagnando il pubblico in un intenso viaggio musicale. Un percorso che utilizza la passione di quasi 200.000 fan messicani come lente per raccontare l’influenza senza tempo della band inglese, offrendo al contempo un potente tributo all’indissolubile legame tra musica, tradizione e spirito umano.

Check out the film's trailer below.

"Depeche Mode: M" serves as a spiritual follow-up to Anton Corbijn's "Spirits in the Forest" (2019) and gathers footage from the three sold-out shows at Mexico City's Foro Sol, part of the world tour held between 2023 and 2024 in support of the album "Memento Mori", the band's first since the death of Andy Fletcher.

"At the heart of 'M' is the deep connection between music, culture and people," explained Dave Gahan. "Fernando Frías managed to tell that story beautifully, through the lens of Mexican culture and our concerts in Mexico City."

The footage shows Dave Gahan and Martin Gore performing in front of more than 200,000 spectators, weaving the live performances together with glimpses of the faces and atmosphere of the Mexican capital. Frías combines live footage with narrative interludes, building a story that puts the band's music in dialogue with the culture and memory of the place. Handling the sound production is Marta Salogni, who was already working on the album alongside James Ford.

This marks the first time Depeche Mode have worked with the director. The film alternates live performances with sequences reflecting on the connections between the songs of "Memento Mori" and the theme of mortality, deeply rooted in the Mexican cultural imagination.

The Depeche Mode concert film will be "a window into the band's global and timeless influence, and a powerful tribute to the unbreakable bond between music, tradition and the human spirit", the group added.

Il tour dei Depeche Mode a supporto del loro quindicesimo album in studio, “Memento Mori”, si è concluso nell’aprile 2024.

In an interview with NME, Frías revealed that when he was approached about the project, the band wanted to move away from the approach they'd already used with fans and in interviews: "They'd already said everything there was to say about coming back after the pandemic and about losing Fletcher. They wanted the film to focus more on the show and on the album's message. So I imagined a story that would be a celebration of the concept of 'Memento Mori': remember that you must die. Not in a dark or provocative sense, but as a natural part of life".

The Mexican director wove archival material, footage shot on obsolete technology, and contributions from writers, poets and anthropologists into the concert, aiming to reflect on Mexico's relationship with death without falling into pop-culture clichés: "I didn't want to offer a reduced, stereotypical view of Día de los Muertos," he told NME. "It's a much more complex subject, with pre-Hispanic roots that are hard to grasp even for us Mexicans. I preferred to pair the concert with a mosaic of voices and images that would enrich it without becoming too didactic."

Perhaps the most striking part of the film is its portrait of the bond between the Mexican audience and the band. Frías notes how Depeche Mode have managed to cut across the country's society: "You see the dark kids from the '80s who've stayed loyal to that look, the young underground types walking around in leather coats under the blazing sun, but also middle-class families dancing to 'Enjoy The Silence' at every party. In Mexico they're a genuine religion, listened to and loved by wildly different generations. It's a phenomenon I haven't found in other countries: here the audience vibrates in unison, there's an electrifying collective energy that doesn't exist anywhere else".

On the visual side, Frías wanted above all to focus on the physicality of Gahan and Gore: "Dave is constantly in motion, whirling around the stage, while Martin embodies his compositions in a more contained way," he explained to NME. "I didn't feel any pressure, only the freedom to play with the shots. The only difficulty was deciding what to leave out: not every song could fit in, but there will also be a full-length edit of the show."

"Memento Mori", Depeche Mode's fifteenth studio album, was released on March 24, 2023. Speaking about the record, Martin Gore commented: "We started working on this project at the start of the pandemic and its themes were directly inspired by that period. After Fletch passed away, we decided to carry on because we're certain that's what he would have wanted, and that really gave the project an extra layer of meaning". Dave Gahan added: "Fletch would have loved this album. We can't wait to share it with you soon, and we can't wait to perform it live during next year's shows".

Fans hoping for new music from Depeche Mode will have to be patient, though, because, as Dave Gahan told NME in an interview, the two surviving members are in no rush to follow up "Memento Mori", the first record made after the death of Andy "Fletch" Fletcher, who passed away in May 2022. "Martin and I have talked", Gahan confirmed, referring to his bandmate and songwriter Martin Gore. "We saw each other recently and it was really nice. We spent some time in Italy, where Anton Corbijn and his wife were renewing their wedding vows at a beautiful spot just outside Rome. We had a really lovely time, with no pressure about work or performing at all". Of course, the two couldn't entirely avoid talking shop during the get-together. "I asked Martin if he'd been writing and he told me: 'No!'", the singer recalled. "That's normal, especially after working intensely for a couple of years. It takes a bit of time. Wait and see. I wouldn't rule out us getting together sooner or later, but right now there's nothing planned".

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