{ "id": "epr7ga1r59", "slug": "time-of-the-wolf", "title": "Time of the Wolf", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": 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"geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2000s", "label": "Drama films 2000s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2000s" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Time of the Wolf (Le temps du loup, Wolfzeit) is Michael Haneke's 2003 French-Austrian-German post-apocalyptic drama starring Isabelle Huppert, about a family left to survive after an unspecified catastrophe, titled after the Edda's wolf-age.", "snippet": "Time of the Wolf (Le temps du loup, Wolfzeit) is Michael Haneke's 2003 French-Austrian-German post-apocalyptic drama starring Isabelle Huppert, about a family left to survive after an unspecified catastrophe, titled after the Edda's wolf-age.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2000s.biographical-and-historical-drama-films.yr-2000-2005", "markdown": "# Time of the Wolf\n\n**Time of the Wolf** (French: *Le temps du loup*) is a 2003 French-Austrian-German drama written and directed by [Michael Haneke](https://www.edgepedia.org/michael-haneke), in which a middle-class family wanders the countryside after an unspecified catastrophe has dissolved the rules of civilized society. It stars [Isabelle Huppert](https://www.edgepedia.org/isabelle-huppert) as Anne Laurent, with Patrice Chéreau, Béatrice Dalle, Olivier Gourmet, Maurice Bénichou, Daniel Duval, Anaïs Demoustier, Lucas Biscombe, Benoît Magimel, and Serge Riaboukine in supporting roles.[1](https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/en/film-info/time-of-the-wolf/) • [2](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_of_the_wolf) Haneke has described it as a \"here-and-now science-fiction film,\" and it is the only science-fiction entry in his feature filmography.[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody) • [2](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_of_the_wolf)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Original title | *Le temps du loup*; working German title *Wolfzeit*[1](https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/en/film-info/time-of-the-wolf/) • [4](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/2472/) |\n| Director and writer | Michael Haneke (born 1942), his only science-fiction film[2](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_of_the_wolf) |\n| Production | France, Austria, Germany, 2003; 113 minutes; produced by Margaret Ménégoz and Veit Heiduschka for Les Films du Losange, Wega Film, and Bavaria Film[1](https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/en/film-info/time-of-the-wolf/) • [5](https://filminstitut.at/filme/wolfzeit) |\n| Lead cast | Isabelle Huppert (Anne Laurent), Patrice Chéreau (Thomas Brandt), Béatrice Dalle (Lise Brandt), Daniel Duval (Georges Laurent)[6](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/time-of-the-wolf) |\n| Title source | The Edda's \"Sibyl's Prophecy\" on the end of the world: \"A wind-age, a wolf-age till the world ruins: / No man to another shall mercy show\"[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody) |\n| Awards | Sitges Fantasy Film Festival 2003: Best Screenplay and Critics Award[5](https://filminstitut.at/filme/wolfzeit) • [7](https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film207640.html) |\n| Reception | Metascore 71; 66% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 53 reviews; 6.4/10 on IMDb from about 12,000 users[8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/time-of-the-wolf/critic-reviews/) • [9](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/time_of_the_wolf_2004) • [10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324197/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Story\n\nThe film opens where an earlier, longer version was to have ended. Georges (Daniel Duval) and Anna Laurent (Huppert) arrive with their two children, Eva and Ben, at their country house, hoping to escape a disaster that has struck the city. The house is occupied by strangers; the intruder shoots Georges, then drives off with the family's car and food.[1](https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/en/film-info/time-of-the-wolf/) • [2](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_of_the_wolf)\n\nAnna and the children are refused shelter by other villagers and set off across a rural landscape where electricity, telephones, and law and order no longer function, and where uncontaminated water is scarce. They eventually reach a railyard occupied by other refugees, all waiting for a train that might carry them somewhere unaffected by the disaster.[2](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_of_the_wolf) • [11](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-time-of-the-wolf-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray) The catastrophe itself is never shown or explained; the audience, as Haneke put it, \"can choose a disaster\" for themselves, because what interested him was how people treat one another under pressure.[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody)\n\n## Title and development\n\nThe title comes from [Germanic mythology](https://www.edgepedia.org/germanic-mythology). In the Edda, the collection of old Germanic poetry, the period just before the Twilight of the Gods is called the wolf-age, when \"no man to another shall mercy show.\"[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody) The Austrian Filminstitut's synopsis renders the same idea: the time preceding the apocalypse, when all values break apart and the highest is turned upside down, is called Wolfszeit, which was also the film's German working title.[5](https://filminstitut.at/filme/wolfzeit) • [4](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/2472/)\n\n**A changed premise.** Haneke wrote the screenplay as a science-fiction film, but by production it played as the present. In an interview with Nick James of *Sight and Sound* (October 2003), he explained that the script had originally been a three-hour film whose first hour, set in an indeterminate European capital, showed things slowly going wrong in a fortified enclave for the rich. After 11 September 2001 he decided that buildup was no longer necessary, and the finished film begins exactly where that deleted first hour would have ended, at the country house.[12](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/complicit%3Cbr%3Ethe%20films%20of%20michael%20haneke/2025/06/17/time-of-the-wolf/) He also said the project had originally been planned as his first film with Isabelle Huppert, but could not be financed until the success of *The Piano Teacher* made backers willing to invest.[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody)\n\n## Production\n\nShooting ran from April to June 2002, on locations including Unterpullendorf and Großmittel in [Burgenland](https://www.edgepedia.org/burgenland), near the Hungarian border, and Vienna.[5](https://filminstitut.at/filme/wolfzeit) • [3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody) Jürgen Jürges was the director of photography, Monika Willi and Nadine Muse the editors, and Christoph Kanter the production designer.[1](https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/en/film-info/time-of-the-wolf/)\n\nMuch of the film takes place at night. Haneke said he wanted to see what a film would look like without artificial light, filmed twenty meters from a fire, calling the resulting narrowing of vision both beautiful and unsettling, and noting that the darkness pushed the production technically close to its limits.[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody) The actors speak French, so the story is presumably set in France, though Haneke insisted the location is secondary: the only definite thing is that it happens in the highly industrialized part of the world, among people accustomed to prosperity.[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody)\n\n## Release and reception\n\nThe film was in the official selection at Cannes 2003 and opened in France on 8 October 2003, followed by the United Kingdom on 17 October 2003 and a staggered rollout through other European countries into 2004.[4](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/2472/) It won Best Screenplay and the Critics Award at the 2003 Sitges Fantasy Film Festival.[5](https://filminstitut.at/filme/wolfzeit) • [7](https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film207640.html)\n\nCritical response was broadly favorable but divided on the film's austerity. On Metacritic it scored 71, with 15 positive, 4 mixed, and 1 negative review among the 20 counted.[8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/time-of-the-wolf/critic-reviews/) Scott Foundas of Variety gave it 100, writing that Haneke shows \"profound insight into the essence of human behavior when all humility is pared away.\"[8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/time-of-the-wolf/critic-reviews/) Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times called it one of the most harrowing and plausible visions of apocalypse since *Night of the Living Dead* (1968).[8](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/time-of-the-wolf/critic-reviews/) Peter Bradshaw in *The Guardian* gave it four of five stars, describing it as \"not an escapist sci-fi vision of the 'future'; it's a tactlessly horrible here and now.\"[7](https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film207640.html) Detractors found the script less focused than Haneke's best work; Dan Fainaru in *Screen Daily* wrote that the director's visual mastery was not matched by a suitable script.[7](https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film207640.html) In a 2023 Guardian ranking of Haneke's films, Bradshaw placed *Time of the Wolf* ninth, calling it \"as brutal as anything else in the canon.\"[13](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/23/michael-haneke-films-ranked)\n\n## Themes and style\n\nHaneke framed the film around a simple question: how a person reacts when electricity stops coming from the socket and water stops coming from the faucet. Hope, he said, is \"the victim's backbone\" for people who are not in control and can only wait.[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody) Unlike a conventional disaster film, the film avoids spectacle entirely; a scholarly account describes it as a catastrophe film without a catastrophe, a science-fiction film with no imagined technology, and post-apocalyptic only in the sense that the apocalypse must be assumed to have already happened.[14](https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/61863/1/Gewalt%20und%20Spiele%20bei%20Haneke%20UMannheim%20MADOC.pdf)\n\nThe film also carries a mythological and religious layer. Haneke acknowledged invoking semi-religious myths, including the legend of the 36 Just, and said he deliberately leaves the interpretation open.[12](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/complicit%3Cbr%3Ethe%20films%20of%20michael%20haneke/2025/06/17/time-of-the-wolf/) In one noted scene, the boy Ben, having heard talk of \"the Just,\" an elect whose self-sacrifice guarantees that God will watch over the rest of mankind, threatens to throw himself onto a funeral pyre.[15](https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2017371/a72fef079574eb16194704546f77b29c.pdf) Structurally, it is an ensemble film in Haneke's choral mode, in which many voices share the narrative, a form he described as dramatically fascinating and more difficult to direct than the single-protagonist *The Piano Teacher*.[3](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Time of the Wolf, FilmFest Hamburg film info](https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/en/film-info/time-of-the-wolf/)\n2. [Time of the Wolf, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_of_the_wolf)\n3. [Michael Haneke talks about TIME OF THE WOLF, Austrian Films interview](https://www.austrianfilms.com/news/en/bodymichael_haneke_talks_abput_time_of_the_wolfbody)\n4. [The Time of the Wolf (Wolfzeit), Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/2472/)\n5. [Wolfzeit, Österreichisches Filminstitut](https://filminstitut.at/filme/wolfzeit)\n6. [Time of the Wolf, JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/time-of-the-wolf)\n7. [The Time of the Wolf (2003), FilmAffinity](https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film207640.html)\n8. [Time of the Wolf critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/time-of-the-wolf/critic-reviews/)\n9. [Time of the Wolf, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/time_of_the_wolf_2004)\n10. [Time of the Wolf (2003), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324197/)\n11. [Time Of The Wolf (2003) review, Eye For Film](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-time-of-the-wolf-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray)\n12. [Time of the Wolf, BFI Southbank programme notes with Sight and Sound interview](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/complicit%3Cbr%3Ethe%20films%20of%20michael%20haneke/2025/06/17/time-of-the-wolf/)\n13. [Michael Haneke films, ranked, The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/23/michael-haneke-films-ranked)\n14. [Gewalt und Spiele bei Haneke, University of Mannheim (chapter on Le Temps du loup)](https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/61863/1/Gewalt%20und%20Spiele%20bei%20Haneke%20UMannheim%20MADOC.pdf)\n15. [On Michael Haneke (essay collection PDF)](https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2017371/a72fef079574eb16194704546f77b29c.pdf)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2000s › Biographical and historical drama films 2000s › Released 2000 to 2005*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/time-of-the-wolf", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/time-of-the-wolf.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Time of the Wolf\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/time-of-the-wolf. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Time of the Wolf](https://www.edgepedia.org/time-of-the-wolf)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/time-of-the-wolf](https://www.edgepedia.org/time-of-the-wolf). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Time of the Wolf\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/time-of-the-wolf. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Time of the Wolf is Michael Haneke's 2003 French-Austrian-German post-apocalyptic drama starring Isabelle Huppert, about a family left to survive after an unspecified catastrophe, titled after the Edda's wolf-age." }