Robert Sigl’s feature debut, the Gothic fairy tale Laurin, is one of the great unsung treasures German fantastic cinema, a gorgeous film that defies easy categorisation (is it fantasy? Horror? Something altogether unique?). For too long, the film was barely seen outside its native Germany until an English-friendly blu-ray releases from Bildstörung and later from Second Run in the UK brought it to much deserved wider attention.

The dreamlike story, full of flashbacks, hallucinations, dreams and other continuity busting devices, is set in 1901 in a small port town somewhere in Germany. Young Laurin (Dóra Szinetár)’s life is turned upside down when her pregnant mother Flora (Brigitte Karner) encounters a shadowy figure late at night, a mysterious man carrying a dead gypsy boy in a sack. Laurin had apparently foreseen the boy’s murder in a dream (it’s a nightmare that keeps coming back to haunt her in increasingly intense fashion throughout) but she didn’t foresee that her mother would also be murdered by the killer. Following the funeral, Laurin’s sailor father Arne (János Derzsi) decides to return to sea, against the wishes of Laurin and his aged mother Olga (Hédy Temessy). A year passes. Mr Van Rees (Károly Eperjes) arrives in the port, also after an extended period at sea, and becomes the new schoolteacher, Laurin becoming immediately attracted to him. But when her young friend Stefan (Barnabas Tóth) disappears, Laurin is dragged into a dark and dangerous grown-up world of repressed lust, violence and murder.

Sigl isn’t afraid to wear his influences very conspicuously on his sleeve – it’s not hard to detect traces of Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973), Nosferatu, both the original and the Werner Herzog remake, Valerie a týden divu/Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), Lucio Fulci’s Non si sevizia un paperino/Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972), The Company of Wolves (1984) and any number of Mario Bava films – yet Laurin somehow remains fresh, distinctive and very much its own film. Indeed, initially released in the year of mainstream horror fare like Pet Sematary and Dead Calm, and franchise entries A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, The Fly II and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, it feels very much a film wonderfully out of time.

For a start, it’s a psychological treasure trove for those interested in such matters, a Freudian cornucopia overflowing with symbolism – dolls (blood-stained and otherwise), water, startling dream sequences, black dogs, a kite that hovers above the action like an angel of death. Freudians will be particularly fascinated by Laurin’s burgeoning sexuality, expressed partly through her friendship with classmate Stefan but mainly through her attraction to her teacher Van Rees. He turns out to be the gay son of the local priest (as noted, it’s a film ripe for psychological interpretation!) and also a predatory child killer. It’s potent and heady stuff, ripe for any number of learned interpretations and now that the film is more widely available, one suspects a tidal wave of such things is incoming.

The cast is terrific. Károly Eperjes, looking uncannily like Ian Bannen in some shots, is superb as the troubled and menacing Van Rees and he meets a wonderfully Fulciesque end in one of the film’s few grisly moments (Laurin is more concerned with atmosphere and mood than it is with gore and violence and is all the better for it). But the real scene stealer is the then-11-year-old Hungarian Dóra Szinetár in the title role, a stunning and affecting performance from someone so young. She’d only previously made a television film, Isten teremtményei in 1986 and since Laurin has only made a smattering of screen appearances which is a shame as she’s so good here in what could have been a very difficult role for one so young.

The only criticism one might justifiably level at Laurin is that the score by Hans Jansen and Jacques Zwart, though a passable enough piece of experimental ambient electronica, seems completely out of place here. For a film as dreamlike as Laurin, the track, with its Suspiria-era Goblin shrieks, drones and occasional clattering percussion feels ill-at-ease with the film’s overall ambience. Which is a shame as it’s the film’s only serious misstep.

If you’re in the mood for fast-paced, gory action, this is not the film for you. It’s a film instead for anyone interested in moody Gothic chills, a film that takes its time to get under your skin and which will keep you guessing which direction it’s going to head in next. Its relative obscurity for all these years is extraordinary – it really should have been far better known all these years. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Nyika Jancsó, rich in meaning and signifiers (the finale takes place in an attic full of toys where Laurin, already tentatively on the cusp of womanhood, is forced out of her childhood innocence by violence and death) and dripping in Gothic menace, Laurin is finally getting the attention and respect it fully deserves.

Sigl picked up the Regienachwuchspreis (Best Young Direction Award) at the 1989 Bavarian Film Awards, the youngest director to date to be so awarded (he was only 25 at the time). For many years afterwards he mostly worked in television where he directed the made-for-TV slasher Schrei – denn ich werde dich töten! (1999) and the Giga Shadow (1997) and K-Town (2000) episodes of the excellent science fiction show Lexx (1996-2002). More recently, he scored a hit with his short film Coronoia 21: It Comes with the Snow (2021). One can only hope that some of his many announced titles, some of them (Wurdilak, Darkness Awaits, the folk horror Golgatha) horror or fantasy, eventually come to fruition. Certainly his return to this kind of Gothic fantasy would be cause for considerable celebration.