Discomfort takes us on a journey under the thin skin of civilisation—and into the overwhelming power of the natural world.

Lorenz Urbach, a teacher, is increasingly troubled by a vague discomfort: a political dissatisfaction, a sense of being overwhelmed and world-weary. Suddenly he has an outburst of aggression—he gets into a fight and his life is turned upside down. When reports start to appear of a blood-thirsty animal causing trouble in the Alps, it triggers deep-seated memories in Lorenz. The media is speculating wildly—could it be a wolf? or perhaps a human being?—and Lorenz thinks of his childhood friend Theresa, the perennial outsider, the social dropout, forever primed for violence … He sets off on a solitary hike into the mountains, grappling with the forces of nature, searching both for the ‘monster’ out in the wilds and for the origins of the violence in himself.