INVESTIGATING MAGISTRATE AND THE FOREST

Everything’s wrapped up really: The young woman has confessed, they could close the file on the murdered man. But it can’t be that cut and dry, can it? And admittedly the perpetrator had very good reasons for her act of violence in the end – ones that are comprehensible today, as their root causes still seem to be rampant in our society, as last New Year’s Eve in Cologne amply demonstrates. It’s also interesting to ponder to what extent this story may have been inspired at least in passing by the sensational case of the 1975 hanging execution of Czech serial killer Olga Hepnarová, a young – most likely depressive – woman, who seemed to be exacting revenge on a sick culture of systematic oppression of those who thought or felt differently. This film doesn’t go quite that far – but the brutalising normality in both cases and the cracks that they reveal are very similar.