Franziska Schlotterer’s provocative debut feature is set in the Black Forest in 1942, where childless couple Fritz (Hans-Jochen Wagner) and Emma (Brigitte Hobmeier) work their isolated farm.

When Fritz finds Albert (Christian Friedel), a Jew on the run from the Nazis, hiding on his land, he takes pity on him and gives him shelter. While Emma greets the new arrival with suspicion and prejudice, the two men form a bond, to the point where Fritz confesses his infertility and asks Albert to father a child by his wife so that he might have an heir to one day take over from him on the farm.

Once they overcome their initial opposition to the idea, the tenderness he shows Emma, something to which she is unaccustomed, causes emotional complications as the arrangement between the three becomes more complex than first imagined.

This is screening as part of IFI Kinofest, a celebration of German cinema presented in partnership with Goethe-Institut Irland, October 10th – 13th.