This film is part of our TOTAL DESTRUCTION! series, where everything—mentally, physically, or emotionally—is spectacularly destroyed.
Inspired by a newspaper article, Michael Haneke’s daring and acclaimed debut film follows the shocking story of a young couple and their only daughter, Eva. On the surface, they lead a respectable bourgeois life, but beneath the façade something is wrong: the family is not happy. With a cold, detached style, Haneke portrays three days in their lives, each set exactly one year apart. With every passing year, the cracks become more visible, the tension more palpable, until the simmering misery inevitably rises to the surface and culminates in a chilling ending.
Haneke’s debut already displays both the flawless style and pitch-black themes that would become a hallmark of his later work. It marks the first part of his Vergletscherungs-Trilogy, in which he seeks to pierce through the illusion of civilization and expose the underlying dark and violent reality. The Seventh Continent is a bleak portrait of the shadow side of existence.