Nobadi (2019)

Ninety-three-year-old Heinrich Senft lives in a garden shed in a community garden on Vienna’s Schmelz. He has an SS blood-type tattoo on his arm. He wants to bury his dead dog in the garden. When the handle of his pickaxe breaks, he gets a new one at a hardware store. On his way home, Adib Ghubar, a refugee from Afghanistan, asks him for work. They come to an agreement and start digging the pit. They get to know each other a little better. It becomes clear that Adib is limping, and Senft learns that Adib owes his German language skills to his work at the Bundeswehr’s Camp Marmal. An argument breaks out when it is time to pay. Senft cannot find his money, accuses Adib of stealing it, threatens him with an old pistol, and makes him empty his pockets and take off his jacket and T-shirt. Eventually, Senft remembers that he hid the money himself and pays Adib. Adib leaves the garden community and falls asleep at a bus stop, his feet hurting. Senft finds him and wants to take him to the hospital, but despite his serious injury, Adib refuses medical treatment because he has no ID. Senft recognizes the danger of blood poisoning, or sepsis, and takes him to a veterinarian he knows and trusts. But she calls emergency services, whereupon Senft strangles her with the telephone cord. He steals surgical instruments, medication, and bandaging supplies and takes Adib back to his garden shed. During the night, he decides that the only way to save Adib’s life is to dig up the medical knowledge he acquired as a medic during the war and amputate Adib’s foot. He administers a “cross-stitch” (spinal anesthetic) for local anesthesia and amputates the foot with an electric knife, while Adib, fully conscious, tells him about his life. After the operation, Senft takes a break and realizes too late that Adib is bleeding to death. In the morning, a social worker arrives and finds Senft putting the final tamping strokes into the earth covering the pit.