Sacred Blood

A young man embarks on the traditional father-son hunting trip, but because his father is ill, the older man’s three best friends come along instead. They sit together in an isolated cabin in the woods, toast to decency and tradition, make jokes that are still acceptable. Slowly, the thin veil of civilisation is lifted. When they get word that wolves have been sighted and a man has gone missing, the hunt begins. The ending will be fatal.

The far underappreciated local author Gisela Elsner was a passionate antifascist. In her novel Sacred Blood she presents German sociability in all its horror. The rhetoric that she injects into the dialogue from three former Nazis in the ‘80s is much like that which we hear now in the Bundestag. Hungarian director Ildikó Gáspár is now bringing this story to the stage in Elsner’s hometown.

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Photo © Konrad Fersterer