The Inheritors (1998 film)

The Inheritors (original German title Die Siebtelbauern – "The Seventh-part Farmer") is a 1998 Austrian-German film directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It stars Simon Schwarz and Sophie Rois and has won numerous awards. The film was selected as the Austrian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 71st Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

In a rural village in a remote valley in Austria at the beginning of the 20th century a land-owning farmer is found dead. The farmer was childless and without further family and, to the surprise of all, willed his worldly goods, including his farm, to his seven farmhands in equal shares. Suddenly seven have-nots have become land-owners. The existing power structure is deeply disturbed and the developments are commonly perceived as threatening the existing world order. Efforts are put into place to undo this wrong. The events triggered by the troubles originating both from within the group of inheritors and from the outside make up the story line of this movie. A sub plot is the mystery of the farmer's motivation for his unusual last will and testament. He was considered to be a hard man with a mean streak, and some of his land-owning peers don't rule out he did it to spite them, as a slap in their face after his death. However, one of the farm hands detects that the story might be more complicated. The film contains a fair amount of graphic violence.