The research station is called ATU327A. This is derived from the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (ATU index), a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore. Index # ATU 327a is called "the children and the witch", which the story of Hansel and Gretel is classified as. The ATU listing reads: "The parents abandon their children in the wood. The gingerbread house. The boy fattened; the witch thrown into the oven. The children acquire her treasure."
Conceived, written, and produced in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The film characters mention the word 'mycorrhiza'. The term, of Greek origin, defines the symbiosis between a fungus (myco-) and the roots (rhiza) of a plant. As in many symbiotic relationships, both partners reap benefits.
The Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Wtches) is a real book, published in Germany in 1486. It was written by Heinrich Kramer (and possibly Jacob Sprenger, though this is doubted by historians). It calls for witches to be burned at the stake in the same manner as heretics, and endorses torture as the only sure method of obtaining reliable testimony. It remained influential until the latter 17th century. The passage quoted in this film, however, is fictional.