Shortly after the founding of the sanatorium, Hanna Leitner, mother of two, who makes the journey from Vienna to the south of Switzerland to escape her bourgeois role, which threatens to suffocate her.
In therapy with the young psychoanalyst Otto Gross, who has a fascination for her, she soon realises what her deep fears and her illness are based on. However, she also senses that the respected doctor has a secret which he is keeping from her. He himself is a patient on the mountain to recover from his drug addiction.
Torn between feelings of guilt towards her family and fascination for the life of the reformers, Hanna overcomes her initial resistance and discovers photography. Besides the young Hermann Hesse, the dancer Isadora Duncan and the founder of Monte Verità - Ida Hofmann - it is especially Lotte Hattemer, the daughter of the Berlin mayor, who challenges Hanna to become aware of her own voice. The mysterious and fascinating young woman casts a spell over her that Hanna can hardly escape. But the friendship between the two is put to the greatest possible test: Lotte wants to leave this life. Hanna, who is torn between the longing to return to her family in good health and the desire to realise her dreams as an artist, has to make a decision...
Monte Verità is a period drama that could not be more modern: A
young woman in search of personal freedom - her struggle to escape bourgeois
conventions and the desire for emancipation, artistic self-realization and
a life in harmony with nature.
