Matterhorn

A widower living alone in a strict Calvinist village, doing everything by the rule. One day a vagrant who does not speak and does not seem entirely well turns up outside his house, and the man takes him in. The village notices immediately and does not like it. A wordless arrangement grows between the two of them, and the man is forced to face something he has not talked about for years either. Diederik Ebbinge's Dutch film holds comedy and sadness inside the same frame. The scenes are quiet, the camera is still, the reactions are tiny; underneath it is one man's attempt to forgive his own past. The pressure of the congregation appears here not as an evil force but as the way people watch one another. In the end the film says how much can change simply by making room for someone.