Austrian graduate student Frieda (Julia Windischbauer) and her mother Johanna (Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg) drive back home. They buy essentials, things necessary for Frieda’s grandmother Elisabeth’s funeral, a gathering for people who, on the surface, loved her. Strangely enough, that woman left an entire forest for Frieda, with trees that can produce lumber for her to sell. As it turns out, there’s a bark beetle infestation, making her lumber useless, and it’s now harder to pay bills. How can Frieda manage both completing the edits of her thesis while having to manage a forest with infected trees? And what does this all have to do with a big secret that may destroy the reputation of her family?
Memories of a Forest surely relies on archetypes in its story but it thankfully depicts ones that deserve viewer sympathy. People in real life who inherit things aren’t the best, but that’s what movies are for – to show us good fictional people. That convincing goodness comes through as Frieda has to break the awful news about the infestation. It’s good to have a sympathetic protagonist on her side, like her will they won’t they ex Freidrich Reis (Lukas Walcher). But a few people can only do so much when nature destroys a working class family’s economic lifeline as well as its legacy. All of this takes place in an archetypically austere Nordic background but one can understand this drama’s high stakes.
- Rated: Unrated
- Genre: Drama
- Release Date: 9/16/2026
- Directed by: Katharina Rabl
- Starring: Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg, Julia Windischbauer
- Produced by: Nicole Leykauf, Ralph Wieser
- Written by: Karla Cristóbal, Katharina Rabl
- Studio: Leykauf Film, Mischief Films
