Wald (2023)

After a terrorist attack, journalist Marian Malin moves from the city to the old country house she inherited from her grandmother. She leaves her husband, Gheorghe, behind in the city. The house is ten kilometers from the nearest village; she has no electricity, little money, no car, and a leaky roof. At the inn, farmer Pühribauer offers to buy her land. To get something to eat, she gathers mushrooms and shoots a hare. Marian’s childhood friend Gerti Peneder lives nearby. She runs a farm and takes care of her parents. When they were young, Gerti and Marian used to roam the woods with Franz. Franz has since taken over his father’s sawmill. When Gheorghe arrives, he suggests that Marian seek professional psychological help to process her trauma. They could demolish the house and replace it with a new one to use as a weekend home. Gerti tells Marian that she had wanted to emigrate with Franz, but her plans were thwarted by her father’s accident. Marian does not understand why Gerti does not put her violent father in a care home. Family, however, is very important to Gerti. After Pühribauer calls Marian and her late mother whores at the inn, Marian hits him, and he hits her in return. When Marian’s grandmother reported Pühribauer to the authorities back then, Franz’s father made sure that everything stayed as it was. According to Marian, Franz’s father hanged himself because otherwise he would have had to go to prison for corruption. After Traudl, Franz’s wife, died in an accident, he raised their son Emanuel alone. After her mother died, Marian left the village without saying goodbye to her friends. When Marian falls ill, Gerti nurses her back to health. A gunshot at Gerti’s farm brings back Marian’s memories of the terrorist attack. Gerti’s father had shot at her and then taken his own life. As a journalist, Marian had reported on environmental disasters around the world, including in Yemen and Sudan. After the terrorist attack, in which a girl was killed, she could no longer go into a supermarket, and she would panic on the subway. Gerti tells Marian that she is going to lease out the farm; her mother wants to move into a retirement home with people like herself. Marian returns to the city.