Deserteur!

The subject remains a taboo. Almost 65 years had to pass before Austria finally overturned the Nazi judgements in 2009 and deserters from the Wehrmacht were vindicated. The film takes us back to 1946/7, the Winter of Starvation in Salzburg. Scarred by traumatic wartime experiences and confronted by social exclusion, four young deserters – a cook, a farmer, an altar boy and a pig keeper – reveal to us the reasons behind their desertion. Successfully walking a tightrope between fiction and documentary, Gabriele Neudecker reveals touching insights into the forgotten victims of National Socialism and their ostracism after the war. (DOK.fest München)