When Frédérick, the patriarch of the Alsatian Muller family, is conspicuously absent from his son Charles’ funeral, Frédérick’s surviving son and his granddaughter, raw from their loss, await an explanation. Once revealed, Frédérick’s reasons and the painful secret Charles harbored for years threaten the foundations of the entire family.
Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s bold symphonic ode to the cycle of life and familial heritage plays out at the Muller’s country estate, where, after surviving a Nazi concentration camp, Frédérick has planted a sumptuous forest. To him, each tree marks a specific moment in his past, a past he is unable to move beyond. Now, every morning as he listens to Wagner, Frédérick gazes at the lime tree he considers his backbone and contemplates the life he has hidden. Meanwhile, witnessing the endless chain of unhappy lives in her sorrowful lineage, his granddaughter fears for her own future. Handled with exquisite depth and assured confidence, this stirring drama questions how family defines us and whether or not one can break free from the entangling roots of the past.