For my daughter
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | For my daughter |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Stephan Lacant |
| script | Michael Helfrich Sarah Schnier |
| production | Ivo-Alexander Beck |
| music |
René Dohmen Joachim Dürbeck |
| camera | Moritz Schultheiss |
| cut | Monika Schindler |
| occupation | |
| |
For my daughter is a German television film from 2018. The war drama produced for the broadcaster ZDF premiered on June 29, 2018 at the Munich Film Festival . The first broadcast date was August 8th. The main location of the action is the war-torn Turkish-Syrian border area, in which a courageous father from Germany tries with all his efforts to find his missing daughter.
action
Benno Winkler is a fairly average middle-aged German; a middle-class pharmacist with an affluent belly who, a little cut off from his surroundings, still mourns his wife Sabine, who died some time ago. Over time, the reserved widower has become estranged from his daughter Emma, who is studying in Berlin. But when he learns that Emma's passport appears without a trace of her at the Turkish-Syrian border, the worried father makes his way to Berlin to see if everything is OK. Benno enters an abandoned student apartment. Photos on the walls suggest Emma has a boyfriend. She also appears to have actively campaigned for a Syrian on hunger strike named Valid Skeif. Benno visits the severely weakened man in the hospital. Valid explains that Emma and her boyfriend Max traveled to Syria to smuggle his family to Germany.
Benno flies immediately to the German embassy in Ankara. But the embassy employee Behrens' hands are tied. He recommends Benno look around for Emma in the refugee camp on the Syrian border. Excited, he travels to the dangerous Turkish-Syrian border area, where the suddenly appearing Turk Ilkay offers him his services as a driver. Benno gains entry to the huge refugee camp and, with the help of a photo of Emma and Max, listens to his daughter at random. Only a middle-aged Syrian family man and his bright son Rasin invite him into their tent, where the three discover that they share a similar fate; Rasin's family has lost its upper middle class existence and mother. Shortly before his return trip, Benno is approached by a man named Nabil, who claims to have met Emma before she went to Syria. Nabil offers generous help and contacts, but Benno has to raise $ 10,000 for checkpoints and any ransom money. The next day they drive across the border. After Nabil has made sure that Benno has the enormous amount of cash, he knocks it down together with an accomplice while resting in the desert.
Without money, passport or provisions, Benno wakes up in the blazing sun and is faced with the existential challenge of surviving a long march through the inhumane desert. After a long wandering he decides in disgust to drink his own urine, but without lasting success; exhausted, he soon collapses. Benno is discovered by a paramilitary unit and taken to a makeshift camp. The rescuers turn out to be a group close to IS . Their leader wants to have the "infidel" shot before they move on. But Benno is lucky; the warrior charged with the execution gets scruples and only fakes the shooting. Benno is able to flee over the Turkish border fence. When he arrives at the refugee camp, he is refused entry because he cannot show a passport. Benno is stunned: “Tell me, are you crazy? I am a German, a German citizen. ”Benno has to stay afloat by stealing bread until the employees of an aid organization finally bring the neglected German to the camp and take care of him. There he is surprised by Razin with news. This leads him to a blond young man, whom Benno identifies as Emma's friend Max. Max is deeply traumatized by a brutal IS attack behind the border, in which Emma was buried in a house. Sadly, they return to Benno's hotel, where he gets drunk. In a conversation it turns out that Max never actually saw Emma's body. Hope grows in Benno.
Together with Ilkay, the two cross the border again and look for the house in question in the middle of the war zone. During another shell attack, Max disappears and is probably killed. Benno and Ilkay are provided by armed women. These surprisingly turn out to be Emma and Namira Skeif, Valids wife. Together with Namira's children, they make their way back.
Production backgrounds
The film was shot for my daughter by an international film team in Morocco and Berlin from April 23 to May 30, 2017 , with only two to three days of shooting in the German capital. It was produced by Bavaria Fiction GmbH and Ninety-Minute Film GmbH on behalf of ZDF. The project went through a number of working titles such as To the Limit , Where Are You? or escape into the unknown .
In addition to the heat of the desert, to which the film team had to expose themselves for several days, the relatively extensive structures for a television film in particular presented the filmmakers with some challenges. For the enormous refugee camp , which in the film is on the border with Syria, only 30 white tents were available, with the help of which the film team had to imitate a facility of gigantic proportions.
reception
During its festival premiere at the Munich Film Festival, For My Daughter was nominated for the Bernd Burgemeister TV Prize (producer Ivo-Alexander Beck ).
When it was first broadcast on August 8, 2018, the film reached 3.26 million TV viewers, which corresponds to a market share of 12.5%.
Reviews
The review sees striking parallels with the plot of the ARD production. Don't worry! with Jörg Schüttauf from the spring of the same year.
For my daughter, moreover, received rather positive judgments, albeit with individual deductions. Above all, the choice of Dietmar Bär is praised as “a prominent, but also first-class cast.” Bär plays “this lonely man who surpasses himself, without any heroic pathos.” Or also as “a fitting cast for the average German. (...) many scenes live solely from Bär's charisma, who apparently conveys Benno's feelings effortlessly and without much mimic effort. "
Thomas Gehringer had to raise an objection to the design of the secondary characters: “There is a lack of interesting, differentiated secondary characters among the refugees who are more than mere victims. After all, there is Ilkay ( Adam Bay ) among the locals in Turkey , who appears out of nowhere in the plot, but turns out to be a reliable helper. ”In addition, the screenplay idea,“ Germans become refugees themselves ”in the ARD film Don't worry about being told "less striking and also more gripping". He sums up: "Above all, the fate of a German family makes us viewers cheer, and, to put it cynically: Perhaps this detour will also give us some understanding for the refugees."
Web links
- For my daughter in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release Info on imdb.com, accessed on August 23, 2018.
- ↑ a b For my daughter (2017-2018) at crew united . Retrieved August 23, 2018.
- ↑ For my daughter (making of) on zdf.de, accessed on August 23, 2018.
- ^ A b Thomas Gehringer: TV film "For my daughter". In: tittelbach.tv. July 22, 2018. Retrieved August 23, 2018 .
- ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff: War knows no borders. In: fr.de. August 7, 2018. Retrieved August 23, 2018 .