This dark, futuristic exploration of the German film genre known as the
Heimat, or village, movie marks Uwe Brandner's critically well-received first foray into filmmaking. For this film, he served as producer, screenwriter and director. In the
heimat genre, the extreme goodness, orderliness and timeless simplicity of life in rural Bavarian villages is highlighted. The genre generally lends itself to melodramatic bathos, and was extraordinarily popular in Germany for many decades. This film faithfully uses the elements of those movies to make a quite different statement. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide