Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (2017) is a German-Austrian folk horror film written and directed by Lukas Feigelfeld as his graduation project from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. Often compared to Robert Eggers' The Witch, it is noted for its minimal dialogue, slow-burn pacing, and heavy reliance on atmospheric storytelling. Etymology and Context
, a goat farmer living in isolation at the edges of a 15th-century Alpine village. Her life is defined by the legacy of her mother, who was suspected of witchcraft and died of the plague during Albrun's childhood. Isolation and Madness: Hagazussa
In pre-Christian Germanic and Celtic traditions, the hedge represented the boundary between the civilized world (the village, the home, the church) and the untamed wilderness (the forest, the mountain, the spirit world). A Hagazussa was a liminal being—a woman who straddled the line between life and death, sanity and madness, humanity and animal. Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (2017) is a German-Austrian
Hagazussa is not entertainment. It is an experience. If you watch it for "scary monsters" or "jump scares," you will be bored to tears. You should watch Hagazussa if: You are a student of folk horror and
At its core, Hagazussa is about otherness, inherited stigma, and how patriarchal and religious structures label, persecute, and internalize deviance. The film interrogates the intersection of mental illness, grief, and superstition: is Albrun truly touched by witchcraft, or is she collapsing under the weight of trauma and social alienation? Feigelfeld resists tidy answers, preferring to let ambiguity linger. The mountainous setting also functions metaphorically: the landscape both isolates and shapes cultural belief, suggesting that geography and hardship can harden communities into superstition and cruelty.
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