Thunder

Summary

Set in Switzerland in the summer of 1900, Thunder follows 17-year-old Elisabeth, a young woman preparing to take her religious vows in a convent. Her plans are abruptly overturned when her older sister dies, forcing her to return to the family farm and resume a life she had tried to leave behind. Back in her deeply conservative village, Elisabeth is expected to step into her sister’s place and conform to the strict religious, social, and family rules that govern everyday life. Unable to accept the official explanations surrounding the death, Elisabeth begins looking into what happened. Her search brings her into contact with people who knew her sister and reveals tensions beneath the village’s outward piety and order. As she spends more time among the local young people and encounters experiences that challenge the teachings she has been raised to obey, her grief gradually becomes entangled with curiosity, desire, and a growing sense of injustice. At the center of the film is Elisabeth, portrayed as both vulnerable and increasingly defiant. The memory of her sister remains a powerful presence, while her family and the village community represent the expectations she is meant to inherit. Religious leaders and local custom reinforce a rigid moral code, leaving little room for women to make independent choices or speak openly about their bodies and desires. Carmen Jaquier’s atmospheric period drama is less a conventional mystery than an intimate portrait of awakening. Its rural landscapes, summer heat, and tactile images create a world that feels beautiful yet claustrophobic, where faith and repression exist side by side with a powerful, almost physical longing for freedom. Thunder explores grief, sisterhood, female desire, the control exerted by patriarchal institutions, and the difficult process of claiming one’s own life in a society determined to define it for you.