pIn an unnamed foreign country, a family of three settles into a house at the edge of the woods where they hope to make a life. But something is off. A sound, at first like coughing and then like laughter, emanates from the nearby forest. Fantastical creatures, it is said, live out there in a castle where feudal lords reigned and Resistance fighters fell. When the mother, fearing another miscarriage, returns to her family's home to give birth to a second child, father and son are left to their own devices in rural isolation. Haunted by the ever-present woods, they look on as the TV flashes with floods and processions of refugees. The boy brings a mysterious half-naked old woman home, but before the father can make sense of her presence, she disappears. A mail carrier with a menacing disposition visits to deliver nothing but gossip of violence. A tree stump in the yard refuses to die, no matter how generously the poison is applied. ppAn allegory for societal alienation and climate catas