Director and screenplay: Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala
121 minutes / AUT/D, 2024
Upper Austria in 1750: A carp pond reflects the gray of the sky. A deep, dark forest swallows the sunlight. An executed woman is displayed on a hill. As proof. As a warning. An omen? The deeply religious and highly sensitive Agnes looks at the dead woman with pity. Also with longing, because she feels a stranger in the world of her husband Wolf, into which she has just married. An emotionally cold world full of work, chores and expectations. Agnes withdraws more and more. Her inner prison becomes ever tighter, her melancholy ever more oppressive. An act of violence soon seems to be her only way out.
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala create an abysmal psychogram of a woman, played with flesh and bone, sinew and soul by Anja Plaschg, who also composed the film music as Soap&Skin. DES TEUFELS BAD gives a voice to women from the rural milieu, the invisible and unheard of of the time; it shows their harsh everyday lives, determined by religious dogmas and taboos that still have an effect today. A film based on historical court records about a harrowing, previously unexplored chapter of European history.
so, 26.05. / 20.00 o'clock