Dignity (TV series)

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Television series
Original title Dignity
Dignity (tv series, 2019) .png
Country of production Germany , Chile
original language German , Spanish
Year (s) since 2019
Production
company		 Story House Pictures, Invercine & Wood
length 52 minutes
Episodes 8 in 1 season
genre Thriller , crime , drama
Theme music Manuel Oyanadel - Not a beautiful country
Director Julio Jorquera Arriagada
idea María Elena Wood, Patricio Pereira
script Andreas Gutzeit (Headwriter)
music José Miguel Miranda, José Miguel Tobar
camera Sergio Armstrong, Cristián Petit-Laurent
cut Álvaro Solar, Valeria Valenzuela
Initial release December 19, 2019 on Joyn Plus +
main actor
supporting cast

Dignity ( English for dignity is) a German - Chilean thriller - series about the Christian sect Colonia Dignidad with, among others Marcel Rodriguez , Striesow , Götz Otto and Jennifer Ulrich in the lead roles. It is a co-production of the German streaming platform Joyn and the Chilean television channel Mega .

The series started on December 19, 2019 on Joyn's paid subscription video-on-demand offer Joyn Plus + and received positive reviews from leading German media. A second season is currently being written, although an extension by Joyn and Mega is still pending.

action

The series takes place in two time levels: The main plot takes place in 1997. It deals with the investigation in Parral and Santiago against the sect Colonia Dignidad . The second time level takes place in 1976. Events in the Colonia Dignidad are highlighted here, where the brothers Leo and Pedro Ramírez live and are sexually abused by the leader Paul Schäfer . Pedro learns of a murder of Klaus Becker by the sect doctor Bernard Hausmann while selling weapons to the Chilean military. To cover up the murder, Pedro is pronounced dead instead of Klaus. Pedro is brainwashed through torture and lives on in the identity of Klaus. Leo is sent to Germany, where Schäfer finances his law studies .

1997 Leo leads an investigation against Paul Schäfer at the request of Judge Jiménez. Leo is now a young public prosecutor living in Santiago. The leader of Colonia Dignidad is obstruction of justice , kidnapping and child abuse accused. The sex crime detective Pamela Rodríguez is the only one of the few police officers who supports Ramírez. Most of the residents of Parral, such as the chief criminal police chief Martínez, as well as political actors from Santiago such as Senator Ríos and department head of the German embassy Sattelberger, see social support in the Colonia Dignidad. A hospital has been set up there under the direction of Hausmann, in which poor citizens of Parrals are treated free of charge. Great recognition is also given to the boarding school , where children from poorer families are given an education.

Therefore, the investigation is made more difficult from several sides. But because of Leo's own life and family history, which holds the Colonia Dignidad responsible for his brother's death, he does not give up. Pamela and his wife Caro, among others, do not initially know about Leo's experience in the settlement. The investigation is also made more difficult because Schäfer has gone into hiding and the settlement doctor Bernard Hausmann and Schäfer's assistant Ava are covering him. During the investigation, Leo and Pamela are threatened several times when Pedro, who was believed to be dead, suddenly appears in Leo's house. Under the threat that his girlfriend Anke Meier would otherwise be killed, he was commissioned to kill his brother. When Pedro appears, Leo finds out that Hausmann was only faking his brother's death and arrests Hausmann for forging documents and covering up a crime. Shortly thereafter, however, he was released because Pamela had important evidence disappeared. The background is that her family is being threatened by Joel Carrillo, an employee of Senator Ríos.

During one of numerous police searches, Anke manages to escape from the settlement. The escape is noticed by Leo and he reunites her with his brother. Caro would like to get them German passports at the German Embassy . Sattelberger noticed the plan and passed it on to Colonia Dignidad. They kidnap Pedro and bring her back to the settlement. Shortly thereafter, Leo breaks in and frees his brother. Together they find Schäfer's hiding place and track him down. Although Leo and Pedro have the opportunity to shoot him, they let shepherds go. Eight months later, Anke and Pedro appear on a talk show in Germany and report on their traumatic experiences in Colonia Dignidad while Leo and Caro became parents. Schäfer was able to flee with his assistant Ava and lives on an estate somewhere in South America.

occupation

Main cast

The actors who play a leading role are listed below, sorted according to the names of the actors in the opening credits. In addition, the child actors in the main roles were added after the adult actors.

role year description actor Episodes
Bernard Hausmann 1997 Doctor in the settlement Devid Striesow 1-8
1976
Paul Schäfer 1997 Sect leader Götz Otto 1-8
1976
Leonardo "Leo" Rafael Ramírez Soto 1997 Prosecutor in Santiago de Chile Marcel Rodriguez 1-8
1976 Settlement dwellers Ignacio Gómez 1 1-4, 7-8
Klaus Becker alias Pedro Alberto Ramírez Soto 1997 refugee settlement dweller Nils Rovira-Muñoz 1-8
1976 Settlement residents, Pedro is pronounced dead in the summer of 1976, but lives under the identity of Klaus Becker Lucas Morales 1 1-5, 8
Pamela Rodríguez 1997 Police officer for sexual offenses in Parral Antonia Zegers 1-8
Anke Meier 1997 Nurse in the settlement Jennifer Ulrich 1-8
1976 Settlement resident Mariana Coghlan 1st 1-3, 5-6, 8
Caroline "Caro" Ramírez check 1997 Employee at the German Embassy in Santiago de Chile, wife of Leo Ramírez Martina Klier 1-8
Ava 1997 Assistant to Paul Schäfer Julieta Figueroa 1-8
1976 Settlement resident Maria Tapia 1 6th
1Does not appear as the main actor, but acts as the child actor of the main character.

Supporting cast

In the following, actors are listed who play a recurring supporting role. Sorted by episode appearance.

role year description actor Episodes
Mr. Jiménez 1997 Judge in Santiago de Chile Alejandro Trejo 1-2, 4-5, 8
Mr. Martínez 1997 Police chief in Parral Daniel Antivillo 1-4, 7
Hartmut Sattelberger 1997 Head of Department at the German Embassy in Santiago de Chile Carlos Kaspar 1-2, 5-8
Hannelore Harms 1997 Employee at the German Embassy in Santiago de Chile Amaya Forch 1-3, 5-7
Carmen Ramírez Soto 1997 Sister of Leo Ramírez, lives in Parral Paola Giannini 1-8
Joel Carrillo 1997 Employee of the Senator Ríos Felipe Ríos 1-5
A househusband 1997 The nurse in the settlement, wife of Bernard Hausmann, is strangled by him in episode 7 Heidrun María Breier 2-7
Manuel Contreras 1976 Head of the secret police of Pinochet Sergio Piña 2-4
Gerhard Mertins 1976 BND employee, acquaintance of Sattelberger Gerardo Ebert 2-4
Pablo Jenga 1997 Pamela Rodríguez's ex-husband, head of a special unit Iván Álvarez de Araya 5-8

Guest appearances

Actors who guest roles in one or more episodes are listed below. Sorted by episode appearance.

role year actor episode
Senator Rios 1997 Hernán Vallejo 1-2
Pastor Paulo Lentins 1976 Luis Dubó 2, 4
Sister Claudia 1997 Christianne Díaz 2
Forensic scientist 1997 Luz María Yacometti 3-4
Dr. Ruíz 1997 Vittorio Yaconi 3
Rosalía Santelices 1976 Camila Vega 5
German ambassador in Santiago de Chile 1997 Stephan Behrend 6, 8
German journalist 1997 Úrsula Barentin 8th

production

History of origin

The idea for the series came from Chilean producers and writers María Elena Wood and Patricio Pereira , who were involved in the award-winning Chilean miniseries Ramona and Mary & Mike in 2017 and 2018 . The fictional thriller is based on historical and scientific principles; more precisely on events in the 1961 settlement of a German sect around Paul Schäfer in Parral in the south of Chile called Colonia Dignidad , which hit the headlines in 1973 in the wake of Augusto Pinochet's military coup because of human rights violations.

Executive Producer Andrés Wood

As early as October 2015, the production company Wood Producciones, under the leadership of Andrés Wood , María Elena Wood's husband, received 414,135,624 Chilean pesos (approx. 495,000 euros, at the exchange rate at the time ) from the fund of the National Television Council for the La colonia series project Chiles ( Consejo Nacional de Televisión , CNTV for short ). The series concept at that time was different from today's. The series was supposed to deal with the escape of two friends, named Tobías Müller and Salo Luna, from the settlement in 1997. It should also be told over two time levels (1976 and 1997). Chilean screenwriters Paula del Fierro and Enrique Videla began writing the scripts in 2016. According to Wood, they were made through the efforts of Hernán Fernández, the lawyer who persecuted Paul Schäfer for ten years without the assistance of official authorities, and who eventually succeeded to get his arrest warrant with the help of a Chilean TV show and investigative journalist Carola Fuentes.

After looking for European investors since the end of 2017, it was announced in August 2018 that the German Story House Media Group , headed by Andreas Gutzeit, had been won as a co-producer. In the course of this, the series concept was changed. Gutzeit as headwriter and the German author Swantje Oppermann worked on the new scripts. The scripts were then revised again by the German directors and screenwriters Robert Krause and Florian Puchert .

At the end of June 2019 and mid-September 2019, it became known that Dignity was a series production commissioned jointly by the Chilean television broadcaster Mega and the German streaming platform Joyn . For Joyn, the series is the first international co-production with a foreign broadcaster and is thus the first series produced by Joyn that is also published internationally. In addition, it is the platform's first paid program, after free comedy series were published there in 2019 with series such as Die Läusemutter , Ms. Jordan equals and Check Check .

Pre-production and shooting

The thriller was produced by the producers Miggel Schwickerath and Jana Cisar jointly by the Chilean production company Invercine & Wood under the direction of the executive producers María Elena Wood , Matías Cardone , Macarena Cardone , Patricio Pereira and Andrés Wood as well as the German Story House Pictures under the direction of Andreas Gutzeit and Jens Freels . The thriller is the first series production for the Story House Media Group. Executive producers Bo Stehmeier , Alex Fraser and Lisa Fidyka for Red Arrow Studios International, Patricia Bazán and Jaime Sepúlveda for Mega and Steve Blank and Thomas Münzner for Joyn were also involved in the production. The production costs per episode were around 330,000 euros . For the casting were Roberto Matus and Ulrike Müller responsible.

Filming for the eight episodes, directed by Julio Jorquera Arriagada , took place mainly in Chile from June to September 2019 . The film was shot in the Chilean capital Santiago de Chile and in the town of Coya , among others . Furthermore, the film was shot for the first time at the original venues in the former Colonia Dignidad , today's Villa Baviera. Original items by Paul Schäfer, such as his table and paintings, can also be seen in the series. While Francisca Román was responsible for the costume design, Víctor Núñez was responsible for the makeup . Sergio Armstrong and Cristián Petit-Laurent acted as cameramen.

Post production

Álvaro Solar and Valeria Valenzuela were responsible for the editing, while José Miguel Tobar and José Miguel Miranda were responsible for the music. Manuel Oyanadel's new interpretation No beautiful land of the folk song No beautiful land at this time , which goes back to Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio , was used as the title song .

The scripts consist of German and Spanish dialogues. The latter are provided with German subtitles in German-speaking countries .

publication

Logos of the two series clients Joyn and Mega Logos of the two series clients Joyn and Mega
Logos of the two series clients Joyn and Mega

The first excerpts from Dignity were published on October 14, 2019 at the MIPCOM TV fair in Cannes . The main actors were also present.

The first publication took place two months later from December 19, 2019 on the German streaming platform Joyn . With the series, Joyn started the paid subscription video-on-demand offer Joyn Plus + . Dignity is only available on Joyn Plus + and only in Germany. Two new episodes were published each week until January 9, 2020.

In Chile, the eight-part series under the title Dignidad should be published with the start of the new streaming platform Megas Mega Go from May 2020. However, at the beginning of May 2020 it became known that the National Television Council of Chile, CNTV, is banning the publication of the series on the streaming platform, as the first broadcast of films and series supported by grants from the CNTV funds must take place on free-to-air Chilean television . The series may only be made available for a fee twelve months after the free TV first broadcast. At the end of June 2020, CNTV President Catalina Parot announced reforms regarding this first broadcast regulation. At the same time, an exception was issued for the Chilean series La jauría , the first publication of which will be available on Prime Video from July 10, 2020 with a paid subscription. No decision has yet been made for the Dignidad series .

For worldwide distribution under the title Dignity , the company Red Arrow Studios International responsible. At the end of June 2020, it was announced that HBO would acquire the pay-TV and SVoD publishing rights for the series for Denmark , Finland , Norway , Sweden , Portugal , Spain , Poland , the Czech Republic , Hungary , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia , Montenegro , Serbia , Slovenia , Bulgaria , Slovakia , North Macedonia and Romania . While in the first six countries the publication took place on August 1, 2020, it took place in the remaining countries on August 14, 2020.

reception

criticism

Dignity received positive reviews. Michael Thumann from Zeit Online commented that with the series Story House Production "a thriller" was successful, "which combines a captivating series plot with historical documentation". He thinks that Dignity leads his "viewers back into the horror, the failures, the looking the other way and confronts them too with the wall of silence from which the victims of Paul Schäfer suffered for so long". With the prominent cast, the plot is told "authentically like a [...] documentary film" and "the landscape shots show the area on the Río Perquilauquén, the overwhelming beauty of which stood in sharp contrast to the ugliness of life in the colony". Thumann also praises the fact that Dignity is a German-Chilean co-production. This is important because "the shadow of Colonia Dignidad [...] stood between the two countries for a long time". However, Thumann thinks that the viewer does not get enough of the horrors of Colonia Dignidad, at least in the first two episodes. "Except for the scene of Pedro and Schäfer in the bathroom and a truly shocking episode of a mock funeral, the director saves [...] with insights into the psychological pressure and physical violence that had prevailed in the colony."

Klaus Raab from Spiegel Online also rates the series positively. He thinks that "'Dignity' [...] can be connected to major socio-political construction sites" and says that "[t] he series [...] is definitely one of the most popular German series of the year". Stefan Fischer from the Süddeutsche Zeitung was particularly impressed by the acting performance. Otto embodies "the creep with a cold brutality that repeatedly tips over into the sentimental, which makes him completely unpredictable" and "Rodriguez plays Ramirez 'suppressed anger and oppression [...] with similar reserve as Götz Otto the cynical messianism of Schäfer". He praises director Jorquera, who gave the actors the space to “actually act and not just deliver their texts”. Matthias Hannemann from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also praised the first two episodes. "Scene after scene in 'Dignity' the shiver chases us down our spine, supported by music that starts with unpleasant surface sounds, over which the cutting bright melody of 'No beautiful country' lies, and sometimes in just a single, long note of a string. "

Jörg Taszman from Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk rates the series as "astonishingly good, very precise, nowhere near as sensational and sometimes superficial as Florian Gallenberger's feature film ". Above all, he praises the linguistic approach, in which "a lot is spoken in Spanish with German subtitles and also in German". However, he is disappointed by the low level of attention the series received, as it "unfortunately went completely under" when it was released.

Awards

The German-Chilean thriller series was selected as the only German production for the competition of the series festival Canneseries 2020 among the top 10.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Thomas Lückerath: "Dignity": Story House goes into series production. In: DWDL.de . July 2, 2019, accessed October 25, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Dignity - Episode Guide. In: Fernsehserien.de . Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Jamie Lang: Writer-Producer Andreas Gutzeit on German-Chile Co-Production 'Dignity'. In: Variety.com . January 21, 2020, accessed on April 17, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c d John Hopewell: Maria Elena Wood, Matias Cardone Talk New Chilean Series 'Dignity'. In: Variety.com . October 12, 2019, accessed December 22, 2019 .
  5. ↑ CNTV entregó 4 mil millones de pesos para new programas de televisión de calidad. In: Cntv.cl. October 28, 2015, Retrieved December 22, 2019 (Spanish).
  6. ↑ Conoce los proyectos que obtuvieron fondos en 2015. In: Cntv.cl. October 28, 2015, Retrieved December 22, 2019 (Spanish).
  7. ^ Sofía García-Huidobro: Te ve Wood. In: Capital.cl. April 26, 2018, Retrieved December 22, 2019 (Spanish).
  8. ^ A b Marcela Tedesco: María Elena Wood de Invercine y Wood: Proyecto Colonia Dignidad cuenta con un socio coproductor de Alemania. In: Produ.com. August 20, 2018, accessed December 22, 2019 (Spanish).
  9. ↑ a b Preserving Dignity. In: Dramaquarterly.com. October 9, 2019, accessed December 23, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Inicia rodaje de Dignidad la nueva serie premium de Mega. In: Produ.com. July 1, 2019, accessed December 22, 2019 (Spanish).
  11. ↑ a b Uwe Mantel: "Dignity" will be Joyn's first international co-production. In: DWDL.de. September 15, 2019, accessed December 22, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Joyn decoy "Dignity" presented. In: Digitalfernsehen.de. October 15, 2019, accessed October 25, 2019 .
  13. ↑ a b Dignity, TV Series, 2019. In: Crew-united.com . Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Gonzalo Valdivia: Así es la primera serie que revive la historia de Paul Schäfer y Colonia Dignidad. In: Latercera.com. June 30, 2019, accessed December 23, 2019 (Spanish).
  15. ↑ MIPCOM 2019: Joyn goes international. In: Blickpunktfilm.de. October 15, 2019, accessed December 23, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Mega estrenará su nueva aplicación al más puro estilo de Netflix. In: Eldinamo.cl. April 8, 2020, accessed July 8, 2020 (Spanish).
  17. ↑ Restricciones para “Mega Go”: Plataforma streaming no podrá estrenar nuevas series tras prohibición del CNTV. In: Fotech.cl. May 2, 2020, accessed July 8, 2020 (Spanish).
  18. ↑ a b Chile y streaming: el protocolo que enfrenta al CNTV con las productoras locales. In: Latercera.com. June 23, 2020, accessed July 8, 2020 (Spanish).
  19. ^ Products: Dignity. In: Redarrowstudios.com. Retrieved July 10, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Kevin Hennings: Red Arrow sublicenses the Joyn series "Dignity" to HBO Nordic. In: DWDL.de . June 22, 2020, accessed July 10, 2020 .
  21. ↑ The horror of Colonia Dignidad , accessed on March 23, 2020.
  22. ↑ You Will Burn in Hell , accessed February 23, 2020.
  23. ↑ The Power of Cruelty , accessed March 23, 2020.
  24. ↑ He ruled the horror sect for decades , accessed March 23, 2020.
  25. ↑ "Colonia Dignidad": Documentary shows the horrors of the sect , accessed on March 23, 2020.
  26. ↑ Kevin Hennings: Joyn series "Dignity" in competition at Canneseries. In: DWDL.de . February 26, 2020, accessed April 4, 2020 .