Zechmeister

Maria Zechmeister is accused of poisoning her husband Anton Zechmeister in 1948. The rumor mill at the regulars' table in the Innviertel is boiling. Angela Summereder worked with original court documents and with the help of Maria Zechmeister herself, who was sentenced to life imprisonment and released from prison early after 17 years. Dietrich Siegl and Michael Totz play the investigating officers. Summereder inscribes the story in the land, in the textures of fields and old wooden floors. This case, as Summereder makes radically clear, is less about whether a murder happened at all (everyone here has poison in the house) or whether there were suicidal intentions, but about how a woman is allowed to behave: a woman's life was judged ("She wasn't in bed by twelve!"). The anatomy of a case and the story of a love that became cold and loveless after the war in which their child was killed. Apples on the windowsill, poor people, envy and resentment in their own family. The sound of birds twittering above. (Julia Pühringer)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum