# The Wall (2012 film)
**The Wall** (German: *[Die Wand](https://www.edgepedia.org/die-wand)*) is a 2012 Austrian-German drama film directed and written by Julian Roman Pölsler, adapted from Marlen Haushofer's 1963 novel of the same name. It stars Martina Gedeck as an unnamed woman vacationing at an Alpine hunting lodge who finds herself sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible, impenetrable barrier, and who records her survival and inner transformation in a journal.[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/) • [2](https://filminstitut.at/en/movies/the-wall)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *Die Wand*; English title The Wall[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/) |
| Director and screenwriter | Julian Roman Pölsler, adapting Marlen Haushofer's 1963 novel[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/) • [3](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/die_wand) |
| Cast | Martina Gedeck (the Woman), Karlheinz Hackl (Hugo), Ulrike Beimpold (Luise), Wolfgang Maria Bauer, Hans-Michael Rehberg, Julia Gschnitzer[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/) |
| Premiere and award | Panorama section, 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, 2012; Prize of the Ecumenical Jury[4](https://filminstitut.at/filme/die-wand) |
| Runtime and release | 108 minutes; Austria 5 October 2012 (ThimFilm), Germany 11 October 2012 (StudioCanal)[3](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/die_wand) • [5](https://www.filmreporter.de/kino/49655-Die-Wand) |
| Oscar submission | Austria's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745686/) |
| Box office | $3,889,260 worldwide, of which $38,674 in the United States and Canada[7](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1745686/) |
| Critical score | 76% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 37 reviews[8](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/die_wand) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and premise
A woman joins a couple on a trip to a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains. When evening comes, her friends go to a pub in the valley and she stays behind with their dog. After the couple fails to come back the following morning, she heads toward the village and stumbles on a frightening find: an unseen barrier, beyond which all life seems absent, has cut her off from the rest of the world. Left with a dog, a cat, and a cow, she must survive alone in the forest, keeping a record of her thoughts, fears, and hardships although nobody may ever read it.[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/)
Beyond the wall she finds an older farming couple outside their hut, motionless, as if frozen in a single moment of life, and she later learns that people on the other side appear to have been frozen in time, leaving her possibly the last person alive.[3](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/die_wand) • [9](https://www.screendaily.com/the-wall/5037936.article) The Austrian Filminstitut describes the story as the individual transformation of a woman forced by the inexplicable phenomenon of "the wall" to break with her accustomed life and lead an entirely new one in a strange world.[2](https://filminstitut.at/en/movies/the-wall)
### Interpretation
Commentators have read the film, like the novel, in several registers. Reviews have described it as a science-fiction parable, a feminist [Robinson Crusoe](https://www.edgepedia.org/robinson-crusoe) story, and a meditation on solitude, with the invisible wall read as a metaphor for depression, loneliness, marginalization, or the barriers facing women.[11](https://mubi.com/en/films/the-wall-2012/critics-reviews) • [14](https://www.theguardian.com/film/movie/149919/wall) Literary scholar Elisabeth Kargl, a lecturer at the University of Nantes, situates the story within (eco-)feminist and post-apocalyptic readings that question social power structures.[15](https://www.capas.uni-heidelberg.de/en/outreach/press-media/last-woman-standing) Pölsler himself said the film pays homage to women forced to live behind an invisible wall of ignorance and intolerance.[12](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Aarticle_id=2166D8BE-FC18-4F89-B0A0-5FADF03C6045&doWork%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle=Load) The German jury's assessment also noted the film's questioning of modern anthropocentrism through the protagonist's deepening relationship with her dog Lynx and the other animals.[3](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/die_wand)
## Adaptation and style
Haushofer's novel, told entirely from the first-person perspective of its female protagonist, had long been considered difficult to film because of its sparse action and interior narration.[10](https://journals.openedition.org/germanica/pdf/2283) Pölsler, who had read the book 25 years before making the film, removed nearly all dialogue, keeping only a few fragments of speech, and lets the woman narrate in voiceover drawn closely from the text.[3](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/die_wand) • [10](https://journals.openedition.org/germanica/pdf/2283) Critics noted the consequence: since the protagonist is almost always alone, the film relies heavily on voiceover, which one reviewer compared to a well-illustrated audiobook.[11](https://mubi.com/en/films/the-wall-2012/critics-reviews)
Pölsler said he did not want the wall to be shown as a physical object: aside from the woman's first encounter with it, it appears visibly only in her nightmares and in scenes accompanied by Bach partitas, which recur whenever she approaches the wall physically or in thought.[12](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Aarticle_id=2166D8BE-FC18-4F89-B0A0-5FADF03C6045&doWork%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle=Load) The sparse score includes Bach partitas played by violinist Julia Fischer, while sound design carries much of the atmosphere, from ambient landscape noise to the wall's unsettling electronic hum.[9](https://www.screendaily.com/the-wall/5037936.article)
## Production
The film was shot in the Salzkammergut region of [Upper Austria](https://www.edgepedia.org/upper-austria) between May 2010 and January 2011, and completed in the winter of 2011/2012.[4](https://filminstitut.at/filme/die-wand) It was produced by coop99 filmproduktion with Starhaus Film as the German co-producer, with television participation from ORF and Bayerischer Rundfunk, and funding from the Austrian Film Institute, Filmfonds Wien, the state of Upper Austria, the German Federal Film Fund, Filmfernsehfonds Bayern, and Eurimages.[4](https://filminstitut.at/filme/die-wand) Cinematography was shared among a team including Christian Berger, Markus Fraunholz, Martin Gschlacht, Bernhard Keller, Helmut Pirnat, and Hans Selikovsky, shooting over several seasons.[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/) • [12](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Aarticle_id=2166D8BE-FC18-4F89-B0A0-5FADF03C6045&doWork%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle=Load)
## Release and reception
The film premiered in the Panorama section of the 62nd [Berlin International Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/berlin-international-film-festival) in February 2012 and won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.[4](https://filminstitut.at/filme/die-wand) It opened in Austria on 5 October 2012 through ThimFilm and in Germany on 11 October 2012 through [StudioCanal](https://www.edgepedia.org/studiocanal), followed by releases in Belgium and France in March 2013, the Netherlands in May 2013, and the United Kingdom in August 2013.[5](https://www.filmreporter.de/kino/49655-Die-Wand) • [1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/) In North America Music Box Films released it on 31 May 2013.[13](https://www.musicboxfilms.com/film/the-wall/) It was Austria's official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 86th Academy Awards, held 2 March 2014.[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745686/)
Commercially, the film earned $3,889,260 worldwide, with about 99 percent of that total outside the United States and Canada; Germany accounted for $2,966,367 and Austria $789,780.[7](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1745686/) The Austrian Filminstitut records 87,764 admissions in Austria.[4](https://filminstitut.at/filme/die-wand)
Critics generally responded well. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 76% Tomatometer from 37 reviews, with the critics' consensus crediting the film with preserving the source novel's thought-provoking themes and calling Gedeck's performance the film's centerpiece.[8](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/die_wand) Jonathan Romney, reviewing for Screen International, called it a riveting, spectacularly shot adaptation and described Gedeck's physically demanding performance as phenomenal.[9](https://www.screendaily.com/the-wall/5037936.article) The German Filmbewertung und Medienbewertung board awarded the film its *Prädikat wertvoll* (especially valuable) rating.[3](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/die_wand)
## References
1. [The Wall (Die Wand), Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/215950/en/newsdetail/216211/)
2. [The Wall, Österreichisches Filminstitut (English page)](https://filminstitut.at/en/movies/the-wall)
3. [Die Wand, Deutsche Filmbewertung und Medienbewertung (FBW)](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/die_wand)
4. [Die Wand, Österreichisches Filminstitut](https://filminstitut.at/filme/die-wand)
5. [Die Wand (2012), Filmreporter.de](https://www.filmreporter.de/kino/49655-Die-Wand)
6. [The Wall (2012), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745686/)
7. [The Wall (2012), Box Office Mojo](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1745686/)
8. [The Wall, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/die_wand)
9. [The Wall, Screen International review by Jonathan Romney](https://www.screendaily.com/the-wall/5037936.article)
10. [Kargl, Elisabeth, and Le Née, Aurélie (2013). L'adaptation cinématographique du roman Die Wand, Germanica no. 53](https://journals.openedition.org/germanica/pdf/2283)
11. [The Wall (2012) critic reviews, MUBI](https://mubi.com/en/films/the-wall-2012/critics-reviews)
12. [The Wall, 56th BFI London Film Festival](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Aarticle_id=2166D8BE-FC18-4F89-B0A0-5FADF03C6045&doWork%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle=Load)
13. [The Wall, Music Box Films](https://www.musicboxfilms.com/film/the-wall/)
14. [The Wall (Die Wand), The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/film/movie/149919/wall)
15. [Last Woman Standing: A scientific commentary on The Wall, by Elisabeth Kargl, Heidelberg University](https://www.capas.uni-heidelberg.de/en/outreach/press-media/last-woman-standing)
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*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 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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