Schmid’s first Italian-language film tells the story of a woman who rules a mountain valley and refuses to loosen her grip, although she has lived a lie all her life. When everything collapses because of an incestuous relationship between two people unaware that they are brother and sister, all of her deceptions crumble as well. Schmid based the film on a nineteenth-century Swiss novella by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer which was frequently mentioned by Freud as an example of his theories on psychopathology. "Like most of my movies," Schmid has said of Violanta, "it’s also the story of a strong woman—played by a beautiful woman, because to me cinema has always meant beautiful women, too. . . . I think women are better adapted to conveying emotions via the film medium."