Winter Silence

A small mountain village in a valley surrounded by snowy peaks. Rough, silent people, merciless nature and seemingly eternal winter. A man's death makes the time flow even more slowly in mourning. The widow and her four daughters spend long winter days praying in silence, doing their everyday duties and coping with what they see at night... Sonja Wyss's film is crude and ascetical and yet the image and sound are sophisticated. For the director both layers of the film have the same meaning: The sound is an additional level of experience, a narrative form paralleling the images. It enriches our experience and touches us in a way very different from an image. As in music, various voices and pitches produce a multi-layered composition. In many scenes it is the sound that is the most important. People are silent, things and activities speak instead; we can hear stiff skirts rustle, wooden floors creak, threads moving through the material during embroidering. Every sound, even a slightest one, is symbolic in the house filled with silence.
And although this is a simple story told, there are not many film "happenings", the film thrives on its unspoken words, hidden emotions, passions and materialised dreams.

Monika Kocbuch