The secret in the forest

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Movie
Original title The secret in the forest
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2008
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Peter Keglevic
script Hanno Hackfort ,
Michael Helfrich
production Dagmar Rosenbauer
music Jürgen Corner
camera Alexander Fischerkoesen
cut Moune Barius
occupation

The secret in the forest is a German television film by Peter Keglevic from 2008 , which was produced on behalf of ZDF . The main roles are cast with Pierre Besson , Christoph Waltz , Sophie von Kessel and Thomas Sarbacher .

action

14-year-old Clara Tomrad disappears on the way to school and is reported missing by her parents . The police immediately start their investigation. In an old school, a Soko is set up under the direction of Frank Breitner and Chief Detective Steffen Gellhagen from the LKA Hannover is brought in. Gellhagen comes back to his home in the Harz Mountains after years and takes over the case at Breitner's request. However Gell Hagen is personally biased because he had an affair with Clara's mother, Susanne Tomrad. But since the already arrested suspect, Hans Kortmann, only wants to speak to Gellhagen, Breitner overlooks it. Kortmann is a former teacher who has served a prison sentence for the last 15 years for the murder of a 15-year-old student. He denies the act and since Gellhagen had investigated him at the time, he only considers him to be able to see the connections. Already during the first conversation it becomes clear that Kortmann still has an open account with Gellhagen, as he accuses him of not having investigated thoroughly enough at the time. Gellhagen senses the suspect's aversion to him, but is not further impressed by it. He also ignores Kortmann's renewed plea of ​​innocence regarding the old murder.

For the investigation, Gellhagen gets the commissioner candidate Jule Brandenburg to the side. He told her briefly about what happened 16 years ago when the body of Kortmann's pupil was found in his garden. He considers it a mistake to have arrested him in the current case. In his opinion, Kortmann should have been observed because then he would very likely have led the police to Clara's hiding place. Since there is now nothing against Kortmann other than speculation, he even has to be released again. Clara's father is horrified and now has two reasons to be angry with Gellhagen. But he is not impressed by it and tries to strategically find an investigation approach. The way in which Kortmann spoke to him during interrogation leads him to assume that he knows more than he reveals. According to his research, Kortmann had close contact with the Albanian Altin Simonic during his imprisonment. After his release, he worked in Clara's parents' brewery and has not returned to work exactly since they disappeared. Gellhagen is concentrating more and more on this track. The area around Clara's hometown is searched with great personnel effort. Preparations have also been made if the kidnapper calls the Tomrads and demands a ransom. The search for Simonic is over when his body is found on the bank of a reservoir. Two bullets in the neck indicate an execution. The explanation is later found in illegal deals in which he was involved.

While searching for Simonic, Kortmann's car was also discovered in the forest. Since Clara's jacket is found in the trunk, the police are convinced that Kortmann has the girl under his control. But he doesn't confess anything and is stubborn as at the beginning. Clara's family perceives all of this as unreasonable and doubts Gellhagen's competence, who has not yet had any success in looking for the girl. But Gellhagen does not let himself be disturbed and investigates according to his ideas. So he thinks it is quite possible that Clara was not kidnapped at all, but could only have run away. He considers the reaction of Clara's best friend to her disappearance, which seemed too relaxed for him, to be an indication of this. He had also found out that Clara was going to be sent to boarding school, which, according to her friend, was absolutely not in Clara's mind.

Kortmann still declares to be innocent and wants revenge for the wrong judgment against him. After further interrogations, during which Kortmann only gives vague hints, Gellhagen is sure that Kortmann is not talking about Clara at all, but about her father, Markus Tomrad. This suspicion was confirmed when the police found a video in the forest that Kortmann had placed in such a way that it could be found. The video tape shows sequences of the schoolgirl he is said to have murdered and Markus Tomrad. At the end of the tape he asks Tomrad to confess to the murder of the schoolgirl, otherwise he would never see Clara again. Gellhagen then speaks to Tomrad, who actually confesses to him that the girl was murdered. Shortly afterwards, Clara's father shoots himself. Meanwhile, the situation in the old school is also coming to a head. Breitner uses Gellhagen's absence to interrogate Kortmann in his own way. First he beats him to get him to confess. When he was unsuccessful, he withdrew his asthma spray , which he needed right now under this stressful situation. In this fear of death he breaks his silence and explains that he had driven Clara to the airport in Hanover. She wanted to see her boyfriend in Greece and he would have encouraged her to dare to take this step and at the same time to use it for his plan to be rehabilitated. Unfortunately, Kortmann did not survive the martyrdom . When Gellhagen returns, he demands an account from Breitner, but then leaves him to his fate and says goodbye with the words: “I hope your son never finds out how corrupt his father is”.

background

The secret in the forest was filmed under the working title Unter Druck from April 18, 2007 to May 18, 2007 at locations in Berlin and Wernigerode . The Cinecentrum Berlin Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH was responsible for the film.

reception

Audience rating

The first broadcast of The Secret in the Forest on September 22, 2008 was seen by 5.03 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 15.9 percent for ZDF .

Reviews

Tilmann P. Gangloff from Tittelbach.tv wrote: “The film, a silent thriller, is an appealing cat-and-mouse game between the suspect and the investigating commissioner, but it also has some weaknesses.” “Many of the pictures are extremely successful ( Camera: Alexander Fischerkoesen). On the other hand, there are moments when, of all people, the experienced Keglevic staged too clumsily. ”Waltz particularly stands out in the film. He “plays this Kortmann with obvious pleasure; only the smugness with which he gives the figure makes him stand out from the ensemble in terms of performance, even if Pierre Besson keeps up quite well. "

The online platform Kino.de judged: “Christoph Waltz convincingly brushes the role of the opaque suspect against the grain. The other actors - besides the named Sophie von Kessel, among others - are good and the pictures by cameraman Alexander Fischerkoesen have the right mix of threatening and idyllic. And yet this film is not going very well. This is also due to the fact that the figure of the missing girl is insufficiently introduced and her whereabouts leave you indifferent and in the further course some things are not plausible. "

When Quotenmeter.de Philipp Stendebach evaluated: "The film is staged from the ignorant view of the investigating what turns out to be a strong plus. In this way, the director gives the viewer the opportunity to reject the guards' suspicions or to propose theories himself. ”“ The tightly tense tension has the consequence that a subtle tension can be felt all the time. It is always buzzing in the subconscious, so to speak. "" The [...] film is to be recommended throughout, as it is extremely exciting and captivates with its sometimes unconventional imagery.

For the critics of the TV magazine TV Spielfilm , The Secret in the Forest was a "strongly played nerve duel in the dark forest". They gave the film the best possible rating, thumbs up.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Secret in the Forest . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2008 (PDF; test number: 115 010 DVD).
  2. ↑ The secret in the forest. Under pressure (working title). at crewunited.de, accessed on October 6, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b Tilmann P. Gangloff : Besson, Waltz, von Kessel, Peter Keglevic. Only one player plays in a different league, accessed on Tittelbach.tv on March 7th. January 2020.
  4. ↑ The secret in the forest. Critics review on Kino.de . In: Kino.de> Films. Kino.de STRÖER Media Brands, accessed on July 4, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Philip Stendebach: The secret in the forest at Quotenmeter.de , accessed on 7 March 2020th
  6. ↑ The secret in the forest. at tvspielfilm.de, accessed on October 6, 2019.