Directed and written by Julian Pölsler and based on Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, this follows a woman (Martina Gedeck) who goes to the Austrian Alps hunting lodge of her friends Hugo and Luise. Somehow, she is cut off from all human contact when an invisible wall suddenly appears. She adopts her friend’s dog, Lynx, and learns just how strong she is when all alone in the world.

By the end of the film, she feels born again and just when you think that there’s a message in this, a man appears and kills one of her cows and — spoiler warning but I hated this — her dog. She shoots him, throws him off a cliff and buries Lynx. Why?

I wanted to like this more than I did. I love the slow-moving story and the way that it was shot. And yes, I understand the circle of life and that animals must die (a cat also dies in a windstorm). But the ending feels unnecessarily cruel. Maybe that’s the story, and this has no moral. Everything is left up to you, even the idea of the wall and what happens next. Maybe I’m an idealist, and I’d like to remember the woman, her cow, her cat and the dog making their yearly trip in spring to live on a mountain in happiness rather than the gory and nonsensical close.

You can watch this on Tubi.