The White Ribbon (German: Das weiße Band) is a 2009 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by the Austrian Michael Haneke.

The screenplay focuses on the children in a village in northern Germany just before World War I. According to Haneke, the film is about “the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature.”

It premiered at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in May 2009 and won the Palme d’Or. This has been followed by positive reviews and several other major awards.

Plot
The events portrayed in the film are narrated as distant memories of the village schoolmaster.

The setting is the Protestant north-German village of Eichwald between 1913 and 1914. Here the pastor, the doctor and the baron rule the roost over women, children and peasant farmers.

The puritanical pastor gives confirmation classes and causes his pubescent children to have guilty consciences over trivial offences. He makes them wear white ribbons of purity to remind them of the path of righteousness from which they have strayed.

When his son confesses to masturbation, the pastor has the boy’s hands tied to the bed frame. It should be noted here, that there is a superb double entendre, as the film shows the Pastor lecturing his son, then stating that there is a way to treat him and then the film cuts to what appears to be the Pastor buggering his son, but it turns out to be the doctor and the midwife engaging in sexual intercourse.The doctor, who treats the village children in a kindly way, nevertheless humiliates his housekeeper (the local midwife) and sexually abuses his own daughter. The baron, who is the lord of the manor, does as he pleases and rides roughshod over his workers. This exploitation so angers the son of one of the farmers that he destroys a field of cabbages belonging to the baron. The young man’s mother had previously been killed when she fell through rotten floorboards at the baron’s sawmill and his grieving father is later found hanged.

Mysterious things happen. A wire is stretched between two trees causing the doctor to fall from his horse. The baron’s eldest son is abducted on the day of the harvest festival and is found the following morning in the woods, having been bound and thrashed with a cane. A barn is set on fire. The handicapped son of the midwife is attacked and almost blinded. The pastor discovers that his canary has been cruelly killed – apparently as revenge for the draconian punishments to his children.

The schoolmaster begins to analyse the facts, finally confronting the pastor with his suspicion that the latter’s own children have been meting out punishments on the weakest. The pastor threatens the schoolmaster, warning him to keep his suspicions to himself – otherwise he will face disciplinary measures. The culprits remain undetected and the events are not explained.

The film ends with the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Ferdinand, and the declaration of war on Serbia by Austria Hungary.

The midwife rides into town on a bicycle – perhaps she has evidence for the police. The schoolmaster leaves the village never to return.

Directed by Michael Haneke

Produced by
Stefan Arndt
Veit Heiduschka
Michael Katz

Written by Michael Haneke
Narrated by Ernst Jacobi

Cast
* Christian Friedel as school teacher
* Ernst Jacobi as narrator, school teacher as an old man
* Leonie Benesch as Eva
* Ulrich Tukur as baron
* Ursina Lardi as Marie-Louise, baronin
* Fion Mutert as Sigmund
* Michael Kranz as private tutor
* Burghart Klaußner as pastor
* Steffi Kühnert as Anna, pastor’s wife
* Maria-Victoria Dragus as Klara
* Leonard Proxauf as Martin
* Levin Henning as Adolf
* Johanna Busse as Margarete
* Thibault Sérié as Gustav
* Josef Bierbichler as steward
* Gabriela Maria Schmeide as Emma, steward’s wife
* Janina Fautz as Erna
* Enno Trebs as Georg
* Theo Trebs as Ferdinand
* Rainer Bock as doctor
* Roxane Duran as Anna, doctor’s daughter
* Susanne Lothar as midwife
* Eddy Grahl as Karli
* Branko Samarovski as peasant
* Birgit Minichmayr as Frieda
* Aaron Denkel as Kurti
* Detlev Buck as Eva’s father
* Carmen-Maja Antoni as midwife

Cinematography Christian Berger
Editing by Monika Willi
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics (United States)

Release date(s)
Cannes Film Festival: 21 May 2009
Germany: 17 September 2009 (limited)
Austria: 24 September 2009
Germany: 15 October 2009 (wide)
United Kingdom: 13 November 2009
United States: 30 December 2009
Running time 144 minutes

Country
Austria
Germany
France
Italy
Language German
Budget €12,000,000

Official website: www.sonyclassics.com/thewhiteribbon