Synopsis
The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band, 2009) is a German black-and-white drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Michael Haneke. Cinematographer Christian Berger shot the film; the cast includes Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaußner, and Leonie Benesch.
Northern Germany, the summer before the First World War. In a quiet Protestant village, a series of deliberate acts of violence begins — a wire strung across a path trips the doctor's horse, the baron's son is found beaten, a farmhand's cottage burns. The young schoolteacher tries to make sense of it. Haneke never hands over a verdict. What he builds instead is an anatomy of a community where obedience is enforced through shame, and where children wear white ribbons as symbols of purity they cannot live up to.
The film took the Palme d'Or at Cannes and later picked up the César for best foreign film. It is slow and deliberate and cold — closer to an inquest than a thriller — and it lands harder because of it. Stream The White Ribbon (2009) online on iFILM.
Starring
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