1975, Rosenkreuz Manor. A nurse and her eccentric patient are bound together by a shared longing: the old lady’s memory contains the secret to Sigrun’s past; the young woman’s life force holds the key to the future for the Baroness.
Grimmfest Says: A heady blend of Nazi eugenics, witchcraft, and Nordic-Teutonic folklore, this takes as its starting point the infamous “Lebensborn” project to produce more “pure-bred” Aryan children – one aspect of which saw illegimate “Aryan” type kids being raised in foster homes, away from their supposedly “degenerate” single mothers – and spins it off into the realms of ferocious fever-dream Gothic psychodrama. Visually and tonally, it takes its cues from such classic 70s political Euro-Horrors as Corrado Farina’s THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACE, but with something of the florid flamboyance of Ken Russell. But the visual pyrotechnics are underpinned by a lucid, clear-eyed exploration of the damage done by bad science in the service of toxic ideologies, the risks involved in any investigation into one’s own origins, and the ways in which myths and folklore can be twisted and bent to provide historic and cultural justification for pretty much anything, however evil or obscene.
Beautifully played, elegantly staged, and uncomfortably ambiguous in its conclusions and resolution, this is a classic, old-school Gothic shocker with a challenging contemporary twist that offers a thoughtful female focused riposte to the likes of ILSA, SHE-WOLF OF THE S.S.