The “Practical Magic 2” press tour might be taking over the world, but Tony Vahl’s impressive feature debut “Krux” also finds space for the supernatural. 

Set in the final days of the WWII and premiering at TIFF and San Sebastián, it portrays a German village waiting for the inevitable: the arrival of Soviet troops. Some of its inhabitants look for ominous signs and listen to prophecies. Others don’t want to wait for a destiny they believe would be worse than death. 

“My grandmother was very superstitious. She used to tell me that you shouldn’t hang laundry on New Year’s Eve because someone might then hang themselves. I was really fascinated by this,” Vahl tells Variety.

“In the film, the priest has his religion. The mayor – his Nazi cult. People always need something they can hold onto. A belief is such a powerful thing. It can help you – or it can destroy you.”

While Vahl leaves certain things unsaid – “I didn’t want to say ‘Russians’ or limit it to just one nation” – the fear is real. 

“There’s something in the air and you can’t define it,” she says.  

“When I was little, I would go to the riverbank with my grandmother. At that time, people didn’t talk much about the war. But my grandmother was different. She told me that in the old days, corpses would float down the river. Then she said: ‘People would go in the water.’ I didn’t understand what it meant. It sounded like a fairy tale – and a horror movie. But I remember how it made me feel. It never left me.”

As the Third Reich collapsed, mass suicides claimed the lives of thousands of Germans. For the longest time, nobody talked about it. 

“It was a taboo. Then, about 10 years ago, Florian Huber wrote about it [in ‘Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself’]. I realized: ‘Oh, it’s not a unique story. It was happening all over Germany’.”

In the film, starring Jella Haase, Frida-Lovisa Hamann, Clemens Schick and Lukas Miko, mass panic ensues and the unthinkable happens. 

“I would ask myself: ‘How could parents kill their own children?’ But they really believed that the future would bring nothing good,” says Vahl. 

“I wanted to find an ethical way to tell this story. If I’m being honest, all my movies are about death, but I didn’t want to exploit it. I wanted to keep certain things in the shadows because our imagination can make things even more terrifying.”

Interestingly enough, Vahl doesn’t care much for war movies.

“I’m not a fan, and we have a lot of them in Germany. I never wanted to make a typical war movie with explosions and soldiers. I studied psychology, so I’m more interested in people’s mentality and how we operate in extreme situations. This film is not a historical lesson, but rather a story about humanity and morality.”

Keeping this in mind, she set out to uncover lesser-known secrets from that time. Just like the so-called “steel helmet wedding” (pictured) where a helmet stood in for the absent – or dead – groom. 

“It really happened, even though there aren’t many photos left,” she says. 

“I have so much respect for history and at the beginning, I focused on that more. But I’m also a big genre fan and yes, I like having some secrets. These characters have no backstories, and things just keep getting darker, like a spiral.”

“I’m a big Steve McQueen fan and he used to talk about ‘body cinema’. You feel it in your gut. That was my main approach, too. I know this movie isn’t easy to watch, but I wanted to leave people with the same feeling I had after ‘Hunger,’ ‘White Ribbon’ or even ‘The Zone of Interest.’ You are asking yourself: ‘What is this film doing to me’?” 

Fittingly enough, “The Zone of Interest” producer Ewa Puszczyńska is also behind “Krux” – as are Martina Haubrich, Claudia Schröter and Peter Hartwig. A Cala Filmproduktion, Extreme Emotions and Kineo Film production, it’s sold by Global Constellation.

Vahl still did her research, however. For over a year.

“I was always in the library, but it wasn’t easy to find information about that time. Then, I read Ian Kershaw’s ‘The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944 – 45’ and he described the Germans as ‘dead inside’,” she says. 

“They didn’t question these things because they were brainwashed. There was this death cult, this hero cult. They had odd words like kadavergehorsam, which means ‘cadaver-like obedience’. The government, or the state, trained people to be without will, without a body, and without the freedom to ask questions.”

She adds: “This is what happens in dictatorships. For some people, it’s easier – at least they have someone to follow. They need this kind of leadership. It happens again and again, and now we have the same situation in Germany.” 

Just before the interview, the far-right party AfD [Alternative für Deutschland] won big in German regional election. 

“There’s a nice quote from Ingeborg Bachmann: ‘History teaches but has no pupils’.”