Gustav Von Aschenbach, a famous German writer, arrives in Venice at a mature stage of his life seeking to renew lost inspiration. From the quiet beach next to his hotel, he spends hours admiring the charm of young Tadzio, a Polish teenager who leads him into an internal struggle between desire and the forbidden that will make him renounce everything, including himself. Death in Venice is a subtle representation of the decadence of a Europe besieged by war and cholera, and, at the same time, an ode to beauty through the eyes of a mature man in the midst of a sexual identity crisis.