THE GREAT ICE

A woman, her long-lost brother, and the wounds of the past.

Anna’s brother lives a reclusive life in Greenland. Since childhood, the older Alex has been fascinated only by ice and solitude. Following the death of their parents, Anna decides to bring him a painting - the only artwork from the family home on the vineyard that Alex ever truly loved. As Anna searches for him in the Arctic, amidst its thousand shades of white, the buried secrets of their family begin to unravel. They were an ordinary German-Swiss family, living by a Lake in Southern Germany as if detached from the currents of history - and yet, wars and global upheavals violently intruded upon their lives.

There is the story of their friend, the painter Otto Marquard, who helped the persecuted escape before being arrested himself. There is the grandfather, Josef, the "miracle doctor" who took his ice bathing to extremes. And, not least, the love marriage between Anna's German mother and the handsome Swiss Paul - which quietly dissolved into a profound drama of estrangement.

As Anna reflects on it all - the beautiful and the painful moments, the wounds and the scars - she also discovers the healing power of beauty and intimacy that were always there, despite everything. In doing so, she begins to piece together her fractured family portrait.