Wintersleepers 1997

The film is set in the snowbound alpine resort of Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, shortly after Christmas Day, where five people return to the quiet town, not all of whom are connected at first glance. Laura, a surgical nurse, and Rebecca, Floriane Daniel a translator, live together in a house Laura inherited, sharing a life that feels both intimate and precarious. René, Ulrich Matthes, a cinema projectionist, and Marco, Heino Ferch a skiing instructor who drives an Alfa Romeo, drift through the town with their own pressures and secrets. Theo, Josef Bierbichler is a middle‑aged farmer who tends a poor, indebted farm nearby, living with his wife Edith, their daughter, and two sons as the cold world presses in around them.

When Marco arrives, Rebecca greets him with a passion that lights up the morning. He leaves his car open, the ignition key still inside, and a night of vulnerability unfolds. A drunken René, wandering the area, takes photographs—some of Rebecca and Marco making love inside the house—before climbing into the Alfa and driving off. Theo, meanwhile, is driving his horse to the veterinarian, but his daughter secretly trespasses into the horse trailer. Distracted and veering into the opposite lane, Theo nearly collides with René. The Alfa crashes into a snowdrift, but René is not hurt. The trailer flips, badly injuring the girl and the horse. Rather than helping, René snaps a photo and walks away. Theo, dazed, notices a distinctive snake‑like scar on the back of René’s head. A passing driver helps Theo out of his truck, and Theo, overwhelmed by the situation, shoots the injured horse and takes his daughter to the hospital where Laura works.

Laura overhears Theo’s obsession with proving his innocence. The town—buried car, no other driver in sight—won’t believe there was anyone else involved, and Theo’s mind keeps circling around the scar as he clings to a memory that won’t quite fit. His daughter remains in a coma, and the sense of guilt gnaws at him from the inside.

Marco files a report with the police about the car theft, growing increasingly frustrated with the slow progress. Rebecca, meanwhile, grows tired of their relationship, feeling she is taken for granted, jealous without reason, and lacking the ambition she craves. Amid these tensions, Laura befriends René; he grants her a free cinema pass and gradually shares his organized album of photos. The images are a lifeline for him, a way to remember people and places after a head injury sustained in military service left him with short‑term memory problems.

Theo and Edith decide to shut down their overloaded, indebted farm. Theo sketches the shape of the scar he remembers and posts copies around town, pleading for information. Edith, ashamed, removes the posters, unsure whether Theo’s quest is a genuine call for justice or a trap he’s spinning to escape his own guilt.

Marco begins an affair with Nina, a young student in his skiing class, and invites her to his boss’s house while the boss is away. When Marco burns himself on a coffee machine, Laura tends to him at the hospital, and in the same hospital, she becomes entangled in Theo’s mounting turmoil as events around the crash begin to reveal a chain of connections. Meanwhile Theo’s daughter dies, intensifying the cascade of consequences.

Reinvestigating the crash site, Theo uncovers the buried car and identifies Marco as its owner. He confronts Marco at his workplace, only to learn that Marco is skiing in the mountains with Nina. The two are separated in a fog, and Nina injures herself by falling off a ledge and onto a tree. After the fall, Nina is tended to by Edith. Desperation drives Marco to search for Nina; on the mountainside, Theo releases his dog against him. When Marco asks what’s happening, Theo can only say, “You killed her.”

Marco, panicked by the realization of what might have happened to Nina—and by his fear of losing her—tries to flee, injuring Theo’s aggressive German shepherd in the process, and skis away toward the edge of a cliff, tumbling into a crevasse in the valley, seemingly to his death.

In a final coincidence, Rebecca and an injured Nina board the same train without recognizing each other. The film closes on a stark, quiet note with the birth of René and Laura’s child, a new life emerging amid the aftershocks of the day’s tragedies.