Das Weiße Band

The White Ribbon (German: Das weiße Band) is a 2009 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by the Austrian Michael Haneke. The screenplay focuses on the children in a village in northern Germany just before World War I. According to Haneke, the film is about "the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature." It premiered at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in May 2009 and won the Palme d'Or. This has been follo... more

The White Ribbon (German: Das weiße Band) is a 2009 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by the Austrian Michael Haneke. The screenplay focuses on the children in a village in northern Germany just before World War I. According to Haneke, the film is about "the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature." It premiered at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in May 2009 and won the Palme d'Or. This has been followed by positive reviews and several other major awards. The events portrayed in the film are narrated as distant memories of the village schoolmaster. The setting is the Protestant north-German village of Eichwald between 1913 and 1914. Here the pastor, the doctor and the baron rule the roost over women, children and peasant farmers. The puritanical pastor gives confirmation classes and causes his pubescent children to have guilty consciences over trivial offences. He makes them wear white ribbons of purity to remind them of the path of... less