The Child (2012)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The child |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2012 |
| length | 118 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Zsolt Bács |
| script | Zsolt Bács, Sebastian Fitzek , Brian Cordray |
| production | Zsolt Bács, Sebastian Fitzek |
| music |
Steven Schwalbe , Steve Patuta , Kahlil Feegel |
| camera | Kim Howland |
| cut | Bernd Schriever |
| occupation | |
| |
Das Kind is a German film adaptation of the psychological thriller of the same name by Sebastian Fitzek , directed by Zsolt Bács from 2012 .
action
The orphan boy Simon Sachs suffers from an inoperable brain tumor and is spending his last days in a Berlin hospital. There he befriends the nurse Carina Freitag. On his 10th birthday, she gave him a return from the psychologist Dr. Deep lake. Actually, she wanted to take away his fear of death, but only achieved that Simon is firmly convinced that he was a serial killer in a previous life. It started 15 years ago when he killed a man with an ax on an abandoned industrial site.
Simon wants to face the police and asks Carina for help. She turns to her ex-boyfriend and lawyer, Robert Stern, and asks him to defend Simon in a possible court case. At first he refuses to help because he does not believe in regression and reincarnation and considers it impossible that the boy could have performed such deeds. Reluctantly, Stern agrees to investigate the alleged crime scene on the industrial site. He is horrified to discover that there is really a corpse hidden there. And not only that, Simon can name more crime scenes.
Stern turns to the police for help. This also excludes the boy as a perpetrator, and Stern inevitably becomes the focus of the investigation himself, as he is always the first to arrive at the crime scene. He is still reluctant to pursue the case, but is drawn into it more and more after a DVD is leaked to him from an anonymous sender. The video contains footage from the nursery of his two-day-old son who died of sudden infant death over ten years ago , which led to the breakup of his marriage. The DVD also contains photos of a now ten-year-old boy who looks like Stern and also bears the unmistakable fire mark of his deceased son. An unknown caller with a distorted voice then contacts Stern and orders him to follow up on Simon's further clues within a week and to find out the name of the real perpetrator, if he ever wants to find out whether his son, who was believed to be dead, is really still alive.
background
The child is the first film adaptation of a Fitzek novel and is based on the novel of the same name, which has been sold more than 3.5 million times in Germany alone since its publication in 2008. The author Sebastian Fitzek had long wanted his books to be filmed. The film rights were sold to film production companies early after the publication of his two first works, Die Therapy (2006) and Amokspiel (2007) , but have not yet been made into a film. At the suggestion of his friend, director Zsolt Bács, Fitzek decided in 2010 to put his third novel Das Kind on the big screen with him.
In Germany, the film was released on October 18, 2012. The film was previously shown in a preview on August 29, 2012 in 15 cities in Germany.
actor
The main roles were cast with international actors. The 11-year-old young Californian actor Christian Traeumer, who is still unknown in Germany, was hired for the role of Simon Sachs. The lawyer Robert Stern is played by Eric Roberts, who had applied for this role with the producers himself after he was made aware of the film project by his wife via the Internet. Due to a personal encounter with a raped boy, he had long wanted to be able to take appropriate action against the abuse of children and saw the film as the perfect platform.
Ben Becker took over the role of Andy Borchert. Dieter Hallervorden , who is known as a cabaret artist, can also be seen. He embodies the pederast and child murderer Mr. Stiemer. Peter Greene and Sunny Mabrey were hired for the roles of investigator Martin Engler and nurse Carina.
financing
Initially, no film production company could be found for the project that would finance and produce the film. The film was ultimately produced by Bács production company Braindogs Entertainment in cooperation with YMC Films and Rat Pack Filmproduktion . Since no public film funding was granted, the film is financed by the producers' equity and by public and private investors. The reasons for the rejection did not lie in the script, but in the psychological thriller genre , which was not considered suitable and profitable enough for the German film market. In order to be able to market the film better internationally, it was shot in English. The shooting took place from May 16, 2011 to June 30, 2011 in Berlin . The budget is 1.1 million euros.
Trivia
Due to the great popularity of the readership, the producers decided to involve the fans in the production. During the filming, castings for extras were held on the company's own Facebook fan page .
Sebastian Fitzek also made a bet with his colleague Zsolt Bács that he would be able to inspire at least 50,000 fans for the film project on Facebook by December 24, 2011. In this case, all supporters should be mentioned by name in the credits of the film. After it was foreseeable early on that the goal would not be achieved, the director decided to name all the people in the credits. Over 10,000 people took part in this campaign.
The network community could also vote on the film poster . The trailer premiered on July 30, 2012 in the Berlin Soda Club and was broadcast live on the Internet.
reception
Reviews
“What is blatantly missing in the first film adaptation of a novel by Sebastian Fitzek is the makers' trust in their own story. The retina is attacked almost non-stop with moments of shock, bloody ax murders and mummified corpses, while the next turning point in the plot approaches rapidly. [...] With all the hectic pace and violence, there is no time to develop a relationship with the main characters, who are so precisely outlined in the book. [...] Fitzek's story is presented in such a complicated way that even those familiar with the novel can hardly keep up. "
literature
- Fitzek, Sebastian: The child . Droemer Knaur , Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-426-51217-3 , p. 416 .
Web links
- Official website for the film
- The child in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The child in the online film database
- The child at crew united
- The child at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for the child . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2012 (PDF; test number: 134 297 K).
- ↑ Sebastian Fitzek filmed “Das Kind” in Berlin . Berliner Morgenpost . Retrieved December 28, 2011.
- ↑ The psychological thriller “The Child” is filmed . sebastianfitzek.de. Retrieved December 28, 2011.
- ↑ a b c Fans - The Child . daskind-film.de. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
- ↑ Townspeople. More than just the big brother: Eric Roberts is shooting in Berlin . The daily mirror . Retrieved April 22, 2012.
- ↑ Detailed review by Andreas Günther (Filmstarts.de)