Germany in the 1930s: two men and a woman hike through the eternal forest to a hut to visit a friend. The composer Otto Schiffmann has retreated into solitude to work on his new symphony. His less gifted but, it seems, more viable study friend Paul Leinert, his wife Anna and their mutual sidekick Wilhelm Krück want to find out what the artist and his work are up to on this excursion. But when they reach his home, Otto has disappeared ...
Timm Kröger's graduation film The Council of Birds (Zerrumpelt Herz) (2014) already seduces us with its title, which is so eminently eloquent and yet refuses to be translated into something concrete - it is the impression itself that counts, and everything that it makes vibrate within us. The slightly milky monochrome images of the forest, the long, slow parallel movements and the symphony of natural sounds swaying and bending underneath are remotely reminiscent of Alexander Sokurov; while the increasingly eerie narrative seems to draw on German cinema classics, especially Murnau. Note that two of the characters have palindromic names ...
