Plot summary
28-year-old Anja Grimm is completing a forestry internship in the Bavarian Forest. During mapping work she has a disturbing encounter with the mentally retarded Xaver Leybach. Shortly afterwards, a brutal murder occurs: Xaver kills his aged, bedridden mother with a spade.After the first shock, a terrible suspicion arises in Anja:Twenty years ago, in a similar fit of insanity, the mentally disturbed Xaver also killed her father and buried him in the forest? Traces of excavations in the forest floor, which she comes across during her mapping work, confirm her suspicion. Anja continues to investigate, obsessed with the search for an answer to her father's fate on the trail of conspicuous features in nature. The village community observes the young trainee with increasing suspicion. Rupert Gollas, with whom she played as a child, falls in love with Anja, but fears that Anja's insistence on further investigations will damage her image for the region.His interest is the same as that of his parents and grandparents' generation, because Anja's mysterious ability to read the forest leads her on the trail of something that even the local police want to keep hidden.Twenty years ago, in a similar fit of insanity, the mentally disturbed Xaver also killed her father and buried him in the forest? Traces of excavations in the forest floor, which she comes across during her mapping work, confirm her suspicion. Anja continues to investigate, obsessed with the search for an answer to her father's fate on the trail of conspicuous features in nature. The village community observes the young trainee with increasing suspicion. Rupert Gollas, with whom she played as a child, falls in love with Anja, but fears that Anja's insistence on further investigations will damage her image for the region.His interest is the same as that of his parents and grandparents' generation, because Anja's mysterious ability to read the forest leads her on the trail of something that even the local police want to keep hidden.Shortly afterwards, the skeleton of Anja's father's body is found. Everything points to the fact that the deranged Xaver killed him twenty years ago. When Xaver also commits suicide in the psychiatric ward a little later, his guilt seems to be established.Anja pretends to be leaving, but returns at night to surprise Rupert and other men in the village, who, under cover of darkness, are in the process of hiding the skulls and bones of a mass grave from the last days of the war under cement, forever untraceable.What was to be Anja's father's fate twenty years ago is now threatening to become her fate as well.But the present ends differently: in a dramatic showdown, the perpetrators and their children suddenly face each other, who pay a high price to finally break the circle of denial and repression.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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A good thriller
I could say I liked everything about the production part, starting from the atmosphere, the scene, the place where the movie took place, it all looked beautiful and yet dark, and mysterious at the same time.
I have to mention the actors, which all did a great job too, nobody felt out of place, except for the main antagonist, maybe, but that could be just my own preference, as I would've seen him grimmer and shadier for the purpose of the movie.
And of course, the main thing about the movie - the story. It's a movie about a buried past, but not the exact past that you would expect in a usual thriller about murder. This one is massive, concerning on a global scale and serves a good reminder that monsters live among us.
The ending makes the movie great. Don't want to spoil it, so won't be going into details, but I loved how it was realistic and thoughtful. You know, lies constantly require more lies to keep them floating, and people will never stop getting hurt until these lies stop.
Thanks for a good movie!
Very good
The movie was exceedingly well made, acted and directed. The locations in the forests of Bavaria were gorgeous. Lead actress Henriette Confurius did a fine job and was quite believable as was the rest of the cast. It's hard to fathom that this was director Saralisa Volm's maiden voyage at the helm of a full length motion picture. Her previous credits were one short clocking in at a mere 7 minutes and two music videos totalling a whopping 8 minutes! She does have a handful of acting credits but to go from such limited experience to directing a 100 minute feature like this is pretty stunning. She did a great job but one wonders just who she knows to be handed this project with such scant experience! I'd also say that I'm sorry that 77 years after the end of WWII we're still dredging up and in some cases inventing atrocities that paint the German people in a bad light. It's time to find a new scapegoat. Germany has paid the price over and over and this account needs to be closed.