Waidmannsdank (2020)

Many residents have moved away from a small community in Carinthia, where everyone knows everyone and many things are settled among themselves. Most of those who remain are unmarried men, including several hunters such as game warden Flattacher, Harry Weinisch, and Hannes Guggenbauer senior. In the evenings, they meet at the only establishment that has not yet closed: Gretl’s Bad Stüberl, the bar at the local swimming pool. When Ernst Huber, one of the villagers, dies after falling from a hunting stand, police officer Martina Schober and her chief, Georg Treichel, initially assume it was an accident. It soon emerges, however, that one of the ladder’s rungs had been tampered with. In their investigation, the officers receive help from Chief Inspector Ilse Acham from Klagenfurt. The hunting stand belongs to Hannes Guggenbauer senior, so the perpetrator may actually have intended to target its owner. The victim was found by game warden Flattacher. Decades earlier, Guggenbauer senior had stolen Flattacher’s wife from him. Police officer Martina Schober is Guggenbauer junior’s aunt; she had looked after him after his mother died. Guggenbauer senior wants to sell the farm, much to the dismay of his son, Guggenbauer junior, who plans to stay there and marry Betti Skawronek. But Betti does not want to settle down and wants to see the world. Soon afterward, someone fires at Guggenbauer senior’s car. He survives with minor injuries, but Treichel, who had been driving the car while the farmer was drunk, is seriously injured and falls into a coma. Guggenbauer had previously received a threatening letter, but it contains only his own DNA. Schober and Acham suspect Flattacher of carrying out the attack on Guggenbauer senior and have his rifles examined. After Ernst Huber’s funeral, Gretl, who runs Gretl’s Bad Stüberl and is in a relationship with Flattacher, reports him missing. She provides an alibi for Flattacher for the night Treichel was injured, saying he was with her. Harry Weinisch tells Guggenbauer junior that his father wants to use the money from the farm’s sale to start a new life with Betti in Grado. Weinisch had put Guggenbauer senior in touch with the buyer. Guggenbauer junior, meanwhile, is determined to stop the sale. This leads to an argument between Weinisch and Guggenbauer junior, during which Weinisch is impaled on a set of antlers hanging on the wall and killed. Guggenbauer junior then goes to his father and threatens him with a gun. Flattacher tries to disarm Guggenbauer junior, and a shot goes off, fatally hitting Guggenbauer senior. Guggenbauer junior then throws himself into the depths of a gorge in front of his aunt and dies as well. Georg Treichel eventually wakes from his coma.