Die Wand

Die Wand (English title: The Wall) is a 2012 Austrian-German drama film directed and written by Julian Roman Pölsler, adapted from Marlen Haushofer's 1963 novel of the same name¹. It stars Martina Gedeck as an unnamed woman who, while staying at a hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps, wakes to find herself cut off from the world by an invisible, impenetrable wall, and must build a new life alone with a dog, a cow, and a cat¹. The film premiered in the Panorama section of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival on 12 February 2012, won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and opened in German cinemas on 11 October 2012¹. Austrian cinemas had opened the film earlier, on 5 October 2012 through distributor ThimFilm².

Adaptation and the voice-over

Pölsler first read the novel in 1986, called it his "life book", acquired the film rights in 2003 after they had long been held by other producers, and then spent seven years working on the screenplay⁷. The novel had long been regarded as unfilmable, because its story is told entirely from the first-person interior perspective of a woman in isolation⁸. To preserve the text, Pölsler had Gedeck's character recite Haushofer's own words, shortened but otherwise unchanged, as an off-screen voice; apart from a few short dialogues at the beginning, the film is spoken entirely from the off⁹.

That choice divided critics. The scholar Beate Petra Kory notes that the strict fidelity brought the film heavy criticism from film theorists, who attacked it as "a well-illustrated audiobook" devoid of originality¹⁰. The German board FBW instead awarded the film its Prädikat wertvoll rating, citing an "extraordinarily dense work"⁵. Other critics praised the film as an austere, contemplative piece that functions as a showcase for Gedeck's performance⁴, with Screen's Jonathan Romney calling it a spectacularly shot, highly intelligent adaptation in which Gedeck's physically demanding solo performance is phenomenal¹¹.

Production and locations

The shoot ran from 7 June 2010 to 1 February 2011, 75 shooting days spread across four seasons, in the Dachstein/Salzkammergut region near Gosau in Upper Austria^{3 • 1}. The Austrian Federal Forests (Österreichische Bundesforste) had searched for nearly two years for a single location that would offer ideal conditions across all four seasons, covering candidates from Tyrol to Salzburg and Styria before settling on Gosau¹². Specific locations included the Gosausee and a hunting lodge, with summer high-alpine footage shot around the Stuhlalm on the Salzburg side of the Gosaukamm, and further filming at Hallstatt and the Krippenstein¹³.

One of Pölsler's own dogs, a Bavarian mountain hound named Luchs, appears as the woman's companion^{9 • 13}. The cow Bella, a Murboden cattle animal whose registered name was Lütizia, became what local coverage called the film's secret star¹³.

Sound and music

The film's music consists of short violin solos from Johann Sebastian Bach's partitas for solo violin, used not to underscore scenes but to set accents in otherwise silent moments^{9 • 14}. Rendering the invisible wall acoustically was the hardest production problem, in Pölsler's account: after experimenting with music and effects, the crew settled on a low humming modeled on the sound an electromagnetic field might make, audible near the barrier^{9 • 15}.

Reception and interpretation

The film holds a 76% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes from 37 critics, with a critics' consensus crediting Martina Gedeck's performance with carrying the film, and an audience score of 69%⁴. Its US limited release through Music Box Films grossed $38,700⁴.

Commentators have read the story in several registers. The Filmdienst describes it as readable as a document of female emancipation, a bleak Robinsonade (castaway survival story, like Robinson Crusoe), a critique of civilization, and a metaphorical depiction of depression¹⁶. Pölsler himself reports that the writer and psychiatrist Paulus Hochgatterer called the book a precise description of clinical depression, and the director's intended resolution was to brighten the depressive mood by having his protagonist come to terms with herself⁷.

The film also revived attention to its source. Haushofer received the Arthur Schnitzler Prize for the novel in 1963, it had been translated into at least 17 languages by the time of the film's release, and a 2012 English reissue carried a still from the film on its jacket^{17 • 18}.

References

1. Die Wand, filmportal.de
2. Die Wand, Österreichisches Filminstitut
3. Die Wand – Der Film, marlenhaushofer.ch
4. The Wall, Rotten Tomatoes
5. Die Wand, Deutsche Filmbewertung und Medienbewertung FBW
6. Die Wand, FILMSTARTS.de
7. Julian R. Pölsler about his film adaptation of THE WALL, Austrian Films
8. Die Wand – Programmkino
9. Die Wand, Dieter Wunderlich: Buchtipps und mehr
10. Julian Pölslers Verfilmung von Marlen Haushofers Roman „Die Wand" als unabgeschlossener Wandlungsprozess, Beate Petra Kory, Convivium 2019
11. The Wall, Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily
12. Größter Film-Dreh auf Bundesforste-Flächen gestartet, APA-OTS, 23 June 2010
13. Die Wand, Literaturverfilmung, Drehorte, gosaunet.at, 6 November 2012
14. Die Wand, Deutscher Filmpreis
15. Julian R. Pölsler über die Adaptierung von Marlen Haushofers DIE WAND, Austrian Films
16. Die Wand, Filmdienst
17. Die Wand – Roman von Marlen Haushofer, marlenhaushofer.ch
18. "Not that I am afraid of becoming an animal" – Ecography in Marlen Haushofer's The Wall

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 2010 to 2014 › Psychological and social drama films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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