TV MOVIE

A new life in the shadow of death...of Heaven

Breath

Austria, 1954. Having lost her husband in the war and her father to illness, the aristocrat Erna has nothing left but her energy and dynamism. These she now puts to good use in her new life as a schoolmistress in the tiny Alpine village of Blons, a picturesque town exposed to massive – and sometimes deadly – avalanches every winter. The cultivated young woman is looked down on by the rough-hewn Alpine farmers, but shows her willingness to adapt by voluntarily doing barnyard chores. Though she is courted by the wealthy landowner Baron von Kessel, it is her headstrong fellow teacher Eugenio that she falls in love with – a feeling that he ardently reciprocates. The young man is an expert on avalanches, and has long been feuding with Kessel, from whose slopes avalanches repeatedly thunder into the valley, destroying houses and killing people. The baron claims that the reforestation of the slopes is sufficient. Erna uses all her powers of seduction to get the baron to sell the property. But before anything can be done, calamity strikes, and on 11 January 1954 two major avalanches come crashing down from the mountains, decimating two thirds of the village and leaving many dead and injured. Erna finds Eugenio, but help arrives too late. Just before Eugenio dies, Erna is able to tell him that she is expecting his child...

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TV MovieDrama Der Atem des HimmelsReinhold BilgeriReinhold BilgeriBeatrice BilgeriJron Löwenberg Gerd BöckmannErnst KonarekKrista StadlerJulia GschnitzerLaura BilgeriEric Judor Bilgeri-Film Produktion in co-production with ZDF and ORFtwo hours

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Based on the true story of the most devastating Alpine

avalanche ever recorded

A new life in the shadow of death...of Heaven

Breath