Die Frau, die im Wald verschwand (4 Stars)

The film's title translates as "The woman who disappeared in the woods". It takes place in 1956 in the fictional Swabian town of Großgelden. The war is over. The hard working Swabians have done their best to forget the past. This succeeds until the mayor's wife mysteriously wanders off into the woods one day and disappears without a trace.

Bit by bit we discover the town's history. The mayor used to be a doctor treating soldiers on the front line. His wife spent the war as a prostitute serving the officers. The owner of the town's textile company is a pardoned war criminal who needs to be punished by dominatrixes to find relief for his guilt. The town's psychiatrist is a Jew, and the level of anti-semitism is still high enough to make people ashamed to admit they've been seeing him. And then a mysterious soldier returns who's been missing in action since 1944.

A unique and fascinating film about post-war Swabia. This was the second in a series of films cut short by the untimely death of director Oliver Storz in 2011. The first film was "Drei Schwestern Made in Germany", set in Swabia in 1947. It was Storz's wish to make a series of films about Swabian life, one for each decade from the 1940's to the present. I can think of no other director qualified to continue his work. R.I.P.