Schweigend steht der Wald

In 1979, when Anja is eight years old, her father disappears without a trace during a family holiday in Bavaria. In the mid-1990s, Anja returns to this place as a forestry intern. Shortly after her arrival, a suicide shocks the community. Anja encounters irregularities in the ground that ultimately lead to a shocking discovery. Silently, the Forest deals with the death marches from the Flossenbürg concentration camp and how their concrete topographical traces – in this case, previously undiscovered mass graves – upset the residents' efforts to forget this history. Thematically related to Michael Verhoeven's The Horrible Girl, the film captivates with an even more intense atmospheric density and leads with increasing consistency to an ending that takes both the protagonist and the viewer by surprise. (T.E.-H./F. S.)