NEBELKIND - THE END OF SILENCE. CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL
It’s a terrifying thought: trauma can haunt generations. Victimhood somehow can be sown into the genes, scarring deep inherited wounds into the psyche. This is the theme of Tereza Kotyk’s excellent new movie which had its international premiere at the Cambridge Film Festival. Introduced by the young director, the film seems like a personal testament about family woes through the generations although Kotyk denies it is about her.
In the movie, Hannah is a 30-something Austrian wolf minder who lives a deliberately isolated life among the wild creatures she helps to protect. She and they inhabit the forests that border modern-day Austria and Czechia. A favourite wolf has escaped the fenced off woods and Hannah, very much another lone wolf, goes in pursuit. Her treks across rain-sodden forests takes her back to a childhood home in a small Czech village. There she confronts her estranged mother Miriam who is restoring the family home taken away from them as the war came to a close in 1945.
In a series of tense flashbacks we are taken to the village in the 90s, when the newly independent Czech Republic had allowed Miriam to return to and restore her mother’s house. But all is not well. Miriam and her mother were ethnic-Austrians, German-speakers who were treated by their Czech neighbours as enemies. Miriam, brilliantly portrayed by Klara Meliskova carries the weight of being the daughter of a former enemy.
We flash further back to 1945, the Soviets are approaching, the war is lost and the Czechs wreak revenge on their Austrian neighbours by taking all their property. Here we encounter Miriam’s mother Viktoria, who stoically refuses to leave her native home, the house and inn she lives in and a precious tiled stove that she owns. Susanne Michel completes a trio of outstanding actors who carry the story to its tender conclusion. Viktoria has gone through hell; her daughter and her daughter are infected with the pain. Can there be some closure between Hannah and her mother? Go see the film to find out.
Kotyk’s film is dense with forest imagery, powerful close ups and a visceral soundscape capturing every gloop and splash of Hannah’s trudge through the woods. It’s a film to keep you on your toes as the timeshifts often come unannounced and the tragic narrative is only told in jigsaw pieces. It is a beautiful film, full of sadness yes but with shafts of hope between the trees.
Nebelkind – The End of Silence is being shown again on 29th and 31st October.
