The White Ribbon (2009)
Directed by Michael Haneke

Film Synopsis

On the eve of the First World War, all appears to be calm in the small protestant village of Eichwald in northern Germany.  Here, a seemingly contented community of peasant farmers, their wives and children go about their mundane lives, under the benign controlling influence of a doctor, a pastor and a baron.  The children of the village are disciplined by the puritanical pastor, forced to wear a white ribbon, a badge of purity, if they commit the slightest of sins.  The wealthy baron has set himself up as the judge of the community - he presides over all disputes and makes himself popular by paying the cost of the harvest festival each year.

The doctor has a reputation for kindness, especially towards the children of the village, but he maltreats his housekeeper and has a habit of sleeping with his teenage daughter.  On the surface, Eichwald would seem to be an idyllic place to live, but then, all of a sudden, it falls foul of an unexplained series of bizarre happenings.  The doctor is tripped from his horse; a farmer's wife falls to her death when she treads on rotten floorboards, causing her husband to hang himself; the baron's son inexplicably vanishes and is later found trussed up; a barn burns down to the ground for no reason...  What has the village done to bring upon itself this plague of woes?   It would seem that some form of divine retribution is in progress, but for what purpose...?