Die Wildente

A prodigal son returns to his former home after a long absence, causing long-buried conflicts to resurface – this is an old trope in world literature. Henrik Ibsen constructed his play The Wild Duck around this motif.

After many years of absence, Gregers Werle accepts an invitation to his father's house. He has long avoided old Werle, a wealthy industrialist, because he had betrayed his late mother and ultimately driven her into alcoholism. Gregers also invites his childhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal to the dinner party where Father Werle cultivates his political connections and at the same time presents his housekeeper as a possible new life partner. In conversation with Hjalmar, Gregers realises that his father not only sent Hjalmar's father to prison – because of a fraud in which he himself was involved – and plunged the once wealthy family into misery, but also brought his former lover Gina together with Hjalmar.
Gregers knows what he must do: he moves in with Hjalmar and Gina, who live with their daughter Hedwig and Hjalmar's father, in order to expose the lies on which their existence is based.
Gregers is convinced that revealing the truth about his father's past and machinations will help the Ekdal family lead a happier and more honest life.


(in German, with some dates featuring English surtitles and additional mobile surtitles in French)