Bergfried (2016)

An old man is buried in a small mountain village. After the funeral, his daughter Erna and his grandson Robert receive a package containing historical records. They were written by Salvatore, an Italian who came to the village in the 1980s. When he was four years old, in 1944, he witnessed German troops wipe out his family and the people of his village. He survived only by chance, when the soldier ran out of ammunition. “Lucky you, little Spaghetti,” the soldier said—a sentence Salvatore never forgot. When Salvatore turns up in the village, nobody initially knows what he is really after. He takes a room at the only inn, makes strange-seeming inquiries, photographs old men, among other things, and surveys farms. This arouses suspicion in the village, especially among the older men. Some of the women, however, take a liking to him as a handsome man in his early forties. They include Romy, the innkeeper, who is subjected to the jealousy and beatings of her wheelchair-bound, alcoholic husband, and Frieda, a lonely chambermaid whose fiancé never returned from the Second World War because, as a Communist, he was betrayed by the village community to the Nazis and sent to the Eastern Front. Salvatore lets Frieda believe that he is a writer and—since she, too, still has a score to settle with the villagers—she becomes increasingly willing to tell him about the old men in the village. He also befriends Erna, a lively young nurse. Erna drives through the woods in her VW Beetle to the music of Janis Joplin and has a four-year-old son. After a trip to India, she has been forced to move back in with her father, the stubborn old Stockinger. He lovingly looks after his grandson, “Bertl,” but does nothing but reproach his daughter. A love affair begins to develop between Erna and Salvatore, although—or perhaps precisely because—she knows her father does not like Italians. What Erna does not suspect is what Salvatore is really looking for in the village: the SS man who shot his family in Italy in 1944. One of the old men in the village is said to be the culprit. A scar under the chin, which Salvatore had imprinted on his memory at the age of four, is supposed to expose him. Erna’s father, the old Stockinger, is one possible culprit. But Stockinger’s chin is hidden by a full beard, so Salvatore cannot tell whether he has a scar. Salvatore breaks into Stockinger’s house, ties him up, and drags him down to the cellar. Stockinger, however, haughtily shrugs off all the accusations. Only after Salvatore shaves him and discovers the scar on his chin does Stockinger confess. Salvatore had intended to avenge his family and kill the man, but in the end decides against it. Erna’s world falls apart when Salvatore announces that he is leaving immediately, without giving a reason. He visits only Frieda, handing her his notes about Stockinger, which she is to give to Robert after Stockinger’s funeral.