Adalbert Stifter

A Christmas TV movie based on Adalbert Stifter's novel.

Adaptation of Adalbert Stifter's novella. In the middle of the 19th century, a young painter sets off to visit his friend - Major István Murai - in Hungary. A completely new life opens up to him. He is mesmerized by the beauty of nature, takes his time on his journey and only reaches his destination after detours and with help...

Old Sanna lives in the mountain village of Gschaid. At Christmas, she receives a long-awaited visit: Sanna's son with his wife and children. At the same time, mountaineers make a gruesome discovery. The body of a man is recovered from the ice of the Alpine glacier. It is Martin, who saved the lives of Sanna and her brother many years ago. Sanna's grandchildren are eager to hear the whole story. And so Sanna tells them about the two hostile villages of Gschaid and Millsdorf and a miraculous rescue from the ice and snow at Christmas.

In the 18th Century, in Bohemia, a government surveyor meet a priest during a lunch and remained intrigued by him. Years later, in a stony valley, the two men meet again and form a deep friendship.

Franz, a Tyrolean mountain farmer's son and passionate poacher, loves the beautiful Sanna. A hunter, who is also interested in her, catches Franz poaching, shoots him and leaves him alone. On the way back to the valley, he falls into a crevasse and dies. When Franz returns home seriously injured by the shot, he is mistaken for the murderer of the missing hunter and is put on trial. Although he is acquitted for lack of evidence, the village community cannot prove his innocence. Everyone turns away from Franz, only Sanna sticks by him. They live in seclusion with their two children on a farmstead. Only when the children get lost in the mountains at Christmas time years later can the supposed murder case be solved.

The towns of Gschaid and Millsdorf are in a constant state of feuding with each other. Nevertheless Gschaid's Sebastian and Millsdorf's Susanne are married. In her husband's town Susanne has to put up with daily harassment by the locals, which also extends to her two children. Finally she moves back to her parents, alone. When the children, who long to find a magical crystal they believe has the power to reunite the family, get lost in a howling blizzard on the exposed mountain after bringing their mother her Christmas presents, both towns set up rescue missions.