Schmitke

Julius Schmitke, a beaten-down, 67-year-old German engineer, has just arrived in a town on the Czech side of the Ore Mountains for the first time to perform the routine repair of an old wind turbine. He does not know, however, that within the rickety old machine awaits a trap from which he cannot escape. Despite his best efforts, Schmitke is unable to finish his repairs, and as time passes it seems that he will remain inexplicably imprisoned in these rugged, misty mountains. Though he does not realize that these attempts to escape from the town are in vain, in time he begins to feel alive again there - driving a motorcycle for the first time, befriending the eccentric residents, and encountering a peaceful forest spirit. He feels a deeper connection to the place, as though he has been there before, and little by little develops a sense of ancestral homeland. As Schmitke's soul fills with life again, so too do the Czech Ores, once abandoned, but now, slowly but surely, awakening.