Shadow Country

Strong film about controversial historical taboo affair. Young pretty woman Marie moves into a small town of Schwarzwald from a city. She is a bit whimsical for a woman living in the country, she likes to wear nice dresses, which she makes herself on her own sowing machine. She even has a phonograph, on which she plays popular songs.

Vitorazsko is an area near Austrian borders, annexed to Czechoslovakia by force in 1920. At the beginning of the Second World War, most of the Czech-speaking residents chose German nationality, namely for economic reasons. Marie’s husband Karel Veber, too,has his family written down as Germans. Despite Marie’s disapproval (they all speak Czech), Karel gets a well paid job at the railway thanks to it. It was calm in the area during the war, it is apparent from the Gestapo archives that there were no excesses or denouncements. Quite the contrary, the neighbors stuck together great and helped each other.

Violence occurred in the area only after the war. A group of socially inconvenient neighbors, has 14 wealthiest thownsmen murdered by means of a people’s tribunal. Other 7.000 people from the area get two hours to pack their stuff and are driven over the border into Austria. Karel Veber is one of those shot in the head brutally after a fast neighbor’s trial, Marie with her two children and mother-in-law has to leave over the border into woods, where they build a temporary shack of branches.