Time of the Wolf

Director: Michael Haneke

2003 / 114min / 35mm

A family, led by matriarch Isabelle Huppert, flees to the countryside in an unnamed European country following a world crisis of unclear origins, in the course of their journey discovering that societal breakdown is well underway. Haneke’s lacerating, under-seen portrayal of civilizational collapse, a bellwether for the cinema’s all-consuming 21st-century obsession with dystopia, utilizes a splintering narrative structure—handled with effortless aplomb by Willi, in her second of six collaborations to-date with Haneke—rooted firmly in the director’s obsessions with the fragility of the family unit. “A frighteningly potent glimpse into the abyss… One of the most harrowing and plausible visions of apocalypse since… Night of the Living Dead.” —Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times