The White Ribbon(Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte)

With his magnum opus, Michael Haneke asks one of humanity’s most important questions: What is the root of evil? Set in a small village in the year leading up to World War I, the blackand- white film portrays a remote town plagued by anonymous and vicious acts of violence, and almost none of the adults in the town is innocent: The town’s pastor takes extreme measures to ensure his children’s ‘purity,’ the baron mistreats his farm workers, and the doctor sexually abuses his daughter while carrying out a toxic relationship with his housekeeper. Like his previous films, Haneke’s sobering parable doesn’t provide clear-cut answers, but its uneasy sense of an enveloping evil brewing beneath the eerie silence will chill you to the bone.

Cannes Film Festival: Palme d'Or and FIPRESCI Prize

12/12(Sat): Speaker: Clarence Tsui (Film festival curator, lecturer in Film Studies)