Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps

"The hills are alive with the sounds of screaming"

2010 1h 50m DE

😐

6.4

MID

★6.4TMDB · 91

ThrillerHorrorMystery

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

1975, Swiss Alps: In a remote mountain village, a beautiful and mysterious woman shows up. Only the village policeman takes care of the strange woman and tries to find out who she is. There are hints that she came from the Höhenalp Alp, where herdsmen do unthinkable things to get the company of women. Many dark truths are revealed that should better have remained hidden. A tragedy of lust, insanity and murder is brought to a seemlingly pure and perfect world. It is the beginning of a nightmare of religious insanity, hypocrisy, abuse and belief in demons, who destroys a young family and brings a whole village to destruction.

“The hills are alive with the sounds of screaming”

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Where to watch · US

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Cast

Roxane Mesquida
Sennentuntschi
Nicholas Ofczarek
Sebastian Reusch
Andrea Zogg
Erwin
Carlos Leal
Martin
Joel Basman
Albert
Rebecca Indermaur
Theres Notter
Ueli Jäggi
Pfarrer Salis
Peter Jecklin
Dr. Zingg

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Michael Steiner
Writers: Stephanie Japp, Michael Sauter, Michael Steiner
Languages: German, French
Countries: Switzerland

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 16 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: German, French.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Michael Steiner, shot by Pascal Walder. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Adrian Frutiger. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Ueli Christen shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Roxane Mesquida and Nicholas Ofczarek and Andrea Zogg carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "The hills are alive with the sounds of screaming".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt1296077 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Michael Steiner directs. Pascal Walder behind the camera. Adrian Frutiger scores. Ueli Christen cuts. Produced in Switzerland. Dialogue in German, French.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 16 years ago.
2Dialogue crosses 2 languages: German, French.
3Directed by Michael Steiner, shot by Pascal Walder. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Adrian Frutiger. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Ueli Christen shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Roxane Mesquida and Nicholas Ofczarek and Andrea Zogg carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "The hills are alive with the sounds of screaming".
8IMDB entry: tt1296077 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
9Only 91 TMDB ratings — you're getting ahead of the curve on this one.

The technical file

Cinematography: Pascal Walder
Original score: Adrian Frutiger
Editing: Ueli Christen
Production design: Gerald Damovsky
Costume design: Pascale Suter
Makeup / hair: Marc Hollenstein
Runtime: 110 min · 1h 50m
Status: Released
Original language: DE
Certification (US): 16
IMDB: Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps (2010)

Also by

Michael Steiner

Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

FolknHell2026-08-23
★ 2/10
Sennentuntschi has almost everything you might reasonably order from the folk-horror cupboard: an Alpine community, an old legend, lonely goatherds, absinthe, a woman apparently conjured from straw and household debris, and the suspicion that something ancient has wandered down from the mountain. The problem is that the film keeps opening the cupboard, throwing in another ingredient and forgetting what it was cooking. Its central idea is terrific. Three men drunkenly enact the legend of the Sennentuntschi, constructing a woman for their own gratification, only for a real woman to appear. That should leave us wondering whether folklore has become flesh or whether frightened, violent men are simply turning an abused woman into a monster because the story gives them permission to. Instead, Michael Steiner keeps explaining, complicating and re-complicating. Present day, 1975 and earlier events are folded together with so little visual distinction that disorientation becomes less an unsettling formal strategy than an administrative problem. Even the Alpine landscape struggles to provide the isolation the story needs because the film continually jumps between hut, village, church and investigation without establishing how these places relate to one another. The soundtrack is similarly restless. Huge, ominous orchestration competes with Serge Gainsbourg and a T. Rex cover as though several different films have wandered into the same edit. There are handsome shots of cloud moving across the mountains, but they often seem to belong to a better-behaved film happening somewhere nearby. What frustrates most is that Sennentuntschi repeatedly brushes against something genuinely disturbing. The sexual violence is horrible, but too often merely horrible, arriving through characters whose behaviour changes faster than the film can make psychological sense of it. Later, a shot briefly positions horns behind the mysterious woman’s head, and suddenly folklore threatens to break properly through the rational surface. The final discovery of the straw-stuffed men has the same grubby, stomach-turning power. Those moments reveal the film it might have been. Instead, the folklore gradually becomes a wrapper around a convoluted true-crime story involving buried histories, clerical abuse and explanations delivered after the fact. Sennentuntschi wants the old story to remain alive in the Alps, but spends so much time rationalising it that it very nearly kills the thing itself. --- Reviewed by FolknHell, the folk horror film podcast. Hear the full FolknHell podcast discussion of Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps, along with our other reviews, transcripts and episodes, at folknhell.com.

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