Written and directed by Sabrina Mertens
Starring Zelda Espenschied, Miriam Schiweck, Freya Kreutzkam and Bernd Wolf
Language: German
Running time: 1 hour and 21 minutes
Unrated-contains some nudity, disturbing images and light body horror

by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy

IMDb lists Time of Moulting’s genres as “drama, history and horror” and the brief synopsis makes it seem like it’s more of an art film than a straight narrative. Further investigation showed that this is Sabrina Mertens’s  feature debut and was made at the Baden-Württemberg Filmakademie. So I was prepared, going in, for this to be a lot more subtle than many of the other things I’ve watched for Fantasia Film Festival.

From the start, you can tell that this is set in 1970s Germany. The sets, decoration and costumes all let you know when you are. At first, it seems like Stephanie (portrayed by Zelda Espenschied) has a fun, innocent childhood with her parents in their very “lived-in” home. Quickly, small cracks in their family unit are shown, similar to their home. Her mother (Freya Kreutzkam) is just able to capture childlike experiences when playing with Stephanie, but is actually incapable of carrying out adult functions and is often bed-ridden. Her Father (Bernd Wolf) seems lovably cantankerous at first, but is quickly shown to be angry and withdrawn, overall.

We watch the family devolve and see more and more of the unpleasantness of their living conditions over the first half of the film. There are occasional moments of niceness, but they are often overtaken by the reality of their situation. The father is barely hanging on, handling most of the adult work that needs to be done around the home with little time to emotionally support anyone else. Stephanie fills in with the work where she can, but it’s easily seen that, at maybe six or seven years old, her childhood has already been given over in order to care for her mother.

At almost exactly the halfway point, the mood of the film eases from a depressing drama into an eerier vibe. Young Stephanie is seen poking around in a storage area and starts playing with some old butcher’s tools. The situations are slightly more “odd” but the sound design and lighting really do the work to form this slow transition. Next, the mother is reading the story of Hansel and Gretel to Stephanie, with all the classic gory themes included.

There’s a ten year time jump and Stephanie (Miriam Schiweck) is now a teen. There’s a hint at what might be troubling the mother. She refuses to throw away any of the, rather extensive, clutter around the house. “Nothing will be thrown away. It is all memories,” of her mother. There are photos of an old slaughterhouse the family used to run, but there’s also some grisly, cannibalistic drawings that appear to be from Stephanie.

There are a number of scenes that show just how much the family and their home have devolved. Along with these, when Stephanie is alone her behavior becomes more and more concerning. She’s falling into a grim internal fantasy world. By the end, the film is fully into the  horror genre.

Time of Moulting is a slow burn, for sure, but I think its overall presentation and payoff are well worth its perfectly concise run time of 81 minutes. While I don’t think this is available anywhere in the states yet, I’m sure it will be picked up by someone soon. Until then, if you’re in Canada, you can virtually screen the film via Fantasia Film Festival on Thursday, August 27th at 5:00PM.