A child is wanted

Movie
Original title	A child is wanted
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	2017
length	90 minutes
Rod
Director	Urs Egger
script	Fred Breinersdorfer ; Katja Röder
production	Nils Dünker ; Eric Bouley ; Christopher Sassenrath
music	Nellis Du Biel ; Ina Siefert
camera	Lukas Strebel
cut	Benjamin Hembus
occupation
	Heino Ferch : Ingo Thiel; Silke Bodenbender : Sandra Schlitter; Johann von Bülow : Reinhard Schlitter; Felix Kramer : Mario "Ecki" Eckartz; Julika Jenkins : Beate Juergens; Christian Beermann : Gerhard Weber; Ronald Kukulies : Winfred "Winni" Karls; Moritz Führmann : Tim Koller; Annina Hellenthal : Konstanze Weiß; Thomas Limpinsel : Pastor; Carlo Bohnenkamp : Florian Koller; Justus Carrière : Minister of the Interior; Letizia Calde : Lisa Schlitter; Bennet Eisenstein : Jimmy; Klaus Filon :; Noah Fischer:; Katja Heinrich : Friedericke Wolf; Dominik Klingberg : Horst Weiland; Mona Kloos : Caro; Michael Krabbe : Oliver Reiss, reporter; Guido Lambrecht : Max, alcoholic; Antje Mairich : Irene Thiel; Patrick Mölleken : Dani, witness; Mats Nohl : Thiel's little son; Christopher Reinhardt : Micha, witness; Lilit Serger : Mirco's big sister; Nina Vorbrodt : Ellen;

A child is wanted is a TV film made by ZDF in 2017 in collaboration with Arte by Urs Egger based on the script by Katja Röder and Fred Breinersdorfer based on the Mirco case from 2010. The film illustrates the investigations of the police under the direction of Heino Ferch also played the detective inspector, the suffering of the boy's parents, embodied by Silke Bodenbender and Johann von Bülow , during the time when it was in the dark what happened to Mirco.

action

In September 2010, ten-year-old Mirco Schlitter disappears on the way home on a Friday evening. When his parents Sandra and Reinhard Schlitter notice the next morning that their son has disappeared and his bed is unused, they call in the police.

Immediately this set up a special commission under the leadership of the experienced chief detective Ingo Thiel. Together with his deputy Ecki, he personally goes on the search while the tracks are still fresh. Witnesses are searched for in town by loudspeaker van. There is a boy who has found Microco's bicycle, and a resident of a house on the outskirts, who briefly saw a car stop on the road from his balcony during a television break. Search parties comb through large areas of the area and a mantrailer leads Thiel to a property on the outskirts. There the dog loses track. Soko is setting up an office in an old tax office building on site. However, it quickly becomes clear to them that they will probably no longer find the boy alive. Nevertheless, they do everything they can to clear up Mirco's fate.

In a conversation with Mircos parents and siblings, Thiel and Konstanze Weiß from Victim Protection try to get information about people who may have behaved conspicuously. In addition, other officials from all over the state are being mobilized to search the area even more extensively, including the waters. A hotline is set up in order to be able to collect all information from the population in a targeted manner in a call center. Soon two young handball players found themselves who confirmed the observation of the first witness and saw a car on the country road. This allows the vehicle type to be determined more precisely. But that does not advance the investigation either. Then a woman answers who found a pair of children's pants in a parking lot. The neighboring forest in this area is searched immediately and other items of clothing, some of which are smeared with blood, are found that undoubtedly belonged to Mirco. It is clear to the investigators that they now have to look for a corpse. Tim Koller, who works in Soko, doesn't want to leave Mirco's parents so completely ignorant. He sends them an unauthorized email to prepare them to face the worst. Thiel then throws Koller out of his team.

A profile of the perpetrators suggests that Mircos kidnappers have to live in the area due to their local knowledge and very likely have a family. Thiel therefore resorts to other and sometimes unusual methods of investigation. He has the household waste of over 100 residents confiscated and searched for abnormalities. After that was unsuccessful, one of Thiel's people came up with the idea of using thermal imaging cameras to look for the corpse, which after 14 days should develop extreme heat due to the decomposition process. Thiel manages to get two tornadoes from the Bundeswehr to do this. 150 km² are scanned and evaluated in this way, but here, too, all finds that range from campfires to dead wild boars are not relevant for your case. Mirco's mother is asked to publicly appeal to the perpetrator, which she does. But without success.

39 days of unsuccessful searches have now passed. They want to reduce Thiel's search team, which he vehemently opposes. To support his team, he brings Koller back, to whom he apologizes afterwards. He needs it to process the encrypted cell phone numbers that his team is still not finished with. Koller says he could write a program that precisely filters the cell phone - if there is one - from all data if its movement profile exactly matches the path taken by the perpetrator and the time of the crime. At the same time, all 4,000 cars that are eligible based on the testimony of witnesses and whose registration data is now available to Thiel, will be examined for possible traces.

On the 65th day of the search, Horst Weiland, a worker at a seed company near the crime scene, is convicted of having given a false alibi. But even this track becomes a dead end. Even after 94 days there is no progress and the interior ministry wants to reduce Thiel's workforce. It's now Christmas and Koller has finished his program. There is actually a cell phone number that could now lead to the goal, but this number belongs to Telecom and a judicial order is required so that the user of this service cell phone is known to you. This leads the investigators in the end to Gerhard Weber, employee in the field service of the telephone company and neighbor (!) Of Tim Koller. An adapted family man with two children who had changed his company car in November. Since the vehicle was sold abroad, it takes time to find it and bring it back to Germany. On the 140th day the car can be examined for DNA traces and it is soon clear that Mirco was in this car. Only now does Thiel Koller inform that his neighbor is the wanted perpetrator.

145 days after Mirco's disappearance, Gerhard Weber was arrested by the SOKO. Weber initially denied it during interrogation, but soon became entangled in contradictions. After a while he describes in detail how the evening of the crime ended. He willingly reveals the spot in the forest where he hid Mirco's body. Thiel can now finally give Mirco's parents a degree for their grief.

background

The film, produced by Nils Dünker for Lailaps Pictures, was shot on behalf of ZDF from March 10 to April 12, 2017 in North Rhine-Westphalia under the working title The Promise . Christopher Sassenrath and Eric Bouley acted as co-producers for Cologne-based handwritten Pictures. The editorial responsibility lay with Günther van Endert for ZDF and Olaf Grunert for Arte . The script is based, among other things, on the episode “The Promise” from the book Soko in action by Ingo Thiel with the collaboration of Bertram Job and the book Mirco - Losing. Despair. Forgive. by Sandra and Reinhard Schlitter.

The film finally celebrated its premiere on September 22nd, 2017 at the crime festival Tatort Eifel in Daun.

reception

Audience rating

It was first broadcast on television on December 15, 2017 on Arte . It reached more than 1.81 million viewers. The market share, which is usually around 1.1% for Arte, was an extraordinary 6%. The film even beat TV stations such as ProSieben, Vox and RTLII in prime time. In France, the film under the title Un Enfant disparaît achieved an additional 1.259 million viewers and a 5.1% market share, which was also well above the local channel average. In the all-time best list of ratings from Arte Germany, the film took second place and was the 2017 winner in Germany and France.

Reviews

Tilmann P. Gangloff from Tittelbach.tv wrote: “It sounds a bit absurd to attest a crime thriller that it is as exciting as a crime thriller. But 'A child is wanted' works differently: no interrogations, no chases, no 'If it wasn't that, then maybe that one ?!' "" The film describes the work of 'Soko Mirco' in a comprehensive and objective manner searched for a missing boy for five months. "

At the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Axel Weidemann assessed: “The events are fluid and, apart from a few highly emotional moments, narrated objectively in changing perspectives. The film makes it anything but easy for the viewer. ”“ It becomes clear that the loss of a child does not only mean losing a loved one without warning. The consequences, including those of the police work carried out with good intentions, can tear the victim's family apart. "

The TV Spielfilm judged the film as "gripping reality rather than crime stories", while tittelbach.tv is of the opinion that the police officers of the Mirco case were primarily "a memorial" with the film. The film gets under your skin and remains extremely exciting for over 90 minutes, even if the viewer knows how the case will end, praised Zeit Online . The Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung found that the film was not spectacular - but terrific, "precisely because it dispensed with effects-demanding moments".

Julian Miller from quotenmeter.de said that the film was not a “successful complete work”, because “In the end there seems to be a dashing, compassionate thriller that only marginally finds space for topics and aspects with genuine depth, and through which Heino Ferch takes part a lot of let out frustration, gripping management and one or the other gentle moment for the affinity for women. "

Awards

The film was awarded the Audience Award and the Actor Award for Heino Ferch at the German TV Crime Festival in Wiesbaden on March 9, 2018 . In addition, he received a nomination for "Best Production" at the awards of the German Academy for Television , which will be awarded on November 30, 2018 in Berlin. 2018 nomination for the Baden-Baden television film festival by arte.

On Monday evening, October 22, 2018, the film was broadcast on ZDF at 8.15 p.m. as "TV film of the week".