Monte Verità (2021)

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of people seeking an alternative way of life set out in search of their paradise. They find it in the open air, beneath the open sky, on Monte Verità near Ascona in Switzerland, where Ida Hofmann establishes a sanatorium. In stark contrast are the heavy wood paneling and doors that take considerable effort to open in an upscale Vienna apartment, the domestic sphere of a woman. The social expectations placed on a woman of standing are thus laid out for her. Twenty-nine-year-old Hanna Leitner, the mother of two girls, suffers from fainting spells and is sexually coerced by her husband Anton, who insists on his “right” and wants to father a son. After her husband has an outburst, the young woman flees to the newly opened Monte Verità sanatorium, following the psychoanalyst Otto Gross, in order to get away from her husband. What Hanna does not know is that her doctor is visiting the sanatorium because of a drug problem. There, she finds the courage to develop an independent identity as a woman. She also pursues her fascination with photography, which her husband—a successful portrait photographer—had forbidden her. Hanna meets Hermann Hesse, Isadora Duncan, and Lotte Hattemer. She had originally traveled to Monte Verità to be cured and return to her family, but her desire to establish herself as an artist and make her own way in life grows stronger there. In Ascona, she and her husband finally break up.