The Silence

The Silence is a crisp German thriller about the murder of a teenage girl. Its director, a bearded Swiss man named Barab bo Odar, declared at the 2010 Stockholm Film Festival that his two favorite movies of all time were Lawrence of Arabia and Blade Runner. The Silence is neither ungodly long nor noirishly sci-fi, but Odar’s mastery of color, tone and shot composition can find parentage in either film. The grisly circumstance of The Silence are thus: a 13-year-old vanishes on a sultry summer night after a squabble with her folks. Her bicycle is found in the exact same place—a rural road and tall-grass field—where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past. (Sam Allard)