Writer’s note Katharina Held

For a long time I’ve been tempted by the idea of writing a mystery film set in Germany. I grew up in a provincial town near the Teutoburger Forest, an area rich with myths and – often bloody – history, which already preoccupied and fascinated me as a child. BLACK MADONNA will be a strong atmospheric film, addressing a central issue of today’s society: for how long can we delay death, and is this artificial prolongation of life even desirable? Is modern science really on the verge of cracking life’s code? Or are there ancient secrets from the past which are far ahead of our time? Our main character Robert’s dream is to discover the gene that will help mankind gain immortality. His wish is based on and driven by the underlying illusion that everything is calculable and optimizable, and that there are no limits to the realization of human ambition. Robert, a scientist from a world of numbers and hard facts, cannot cope with the mysterious, fairytale-like world of the village, where all his actions seem futile. Essentially BLACK MADONNA is a story about the clash of these two worlds, and about the irreconcilability between faith and modern science.