Memories of a Forest

Frieda (Julia Windischbauer) is on deadline to finish her doctoral dissertation by the end of summer, after which she’ll be offered a prestigious position at the University of Vienna. However, the sudden death of her beloved grandmother heralds her return to the Lower Austrian village in which she was raised, where, unlike Frieda, not much has changed. And, as the famous adage goes, you can’t go home again.

When the estate is being settled, everyone is surprised to learn that the prized 15 hectares of forest — once purchased as an investment in the future, and which could now be sold to relieve the family’s financial difficulties — have been left to the city-dwelling student. Frieda’s laconic mother Joahanna, in the footsteps of the late family matriarch, whose life was marked by responsibilities and physical labour, has always subordinated her needs to farm and family, and harbours strong feelings about their resources. However, upon evaluating the landscape of her inheritance, which, due to a rampant bark beetle infestation may be worthless, the bewildered granddaughter, bearing a sense of obligation to her legacy and to the forest that bore witness to generations of sacrifice, must now make a choice between her origins and her envisioned future.

Shot by Jacob Kohl and co-penned alongside Karla Cristóbal, director Katharina Rabl’s stunning debut toggles between loyalty and a sense of duty to what’s come before and the desires to fulfil one’s own wildest dreams and what might lay ahead. When the time comes, Freida must choose what for her is a road less traveled. 

DOROTA LECH