"Hierankl", the movie debut by Hans Steinbichler, is a modern regional drama about secrets and lies in a rural family. At the Munich Film Festival, "Hierankl" received "German Film Fellowship" awards in the "Best Director" (Hans Steinbichler) and "Best Actress" (Johanna Wokalek) categories.

Content:

Lene (Johanna Wokalek) is on a railway platform in Munich. She has to decide whether she will return to Berlin, where she lives, or travel south, where Lene’s family lives in a remote homestead called Hierankl on the fringes of the Alps. Lene has not seen her family for many years. At the age of seventeen, she departed for Berlin following an argument with her mother Rosemarie (Barbara Sukowa). She now feels strong enough to return to Hierankl and to face Rosemarie again. The sixtieth birthday of her father Lukas (Josef Bierbichler) is a welcome occasion and Lene will also see her brother Paul (Frank Giering) again. She takes the train south.

But Hierankl also welcomes a further, unexpected guest on the same day. Goetz Hildebrand (Peter Simonischek), a common friend of the parents from their student years. He is seeing them for the first time in thirty years. Goetz recalls Hierankl as the place that Lene also remembers, but he also knows what it was like before Lene was born and he embarked on a torrid love affair with Rosemarie. Lene immediately develops deep feelings for the inscrutable, good-looking stranger and enters into an amour fou, which triggers an unexpected chain reaction.

An AVISTA Film Herbert Rimbach, ARRI, BRAINPOOL TV AG, HFF Munich, BR, ARTE and SWR co-production.

Actors: Johanna Wokalek, Barbara Sukowa, Josef Bierbichler, Peter Simonischek, Frank Giering, Alexander Beyer

Sets: Dörthe Komnick, Johannes Sternagel