Death in boarding school (2017)

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Movie
Original title Death in boarding school
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2017
length 2x105 minutes
Rod
Director Torsten C. Fischer
script Frauke Hunfeld
production Andreas Schneppe
Sven Burgemeister
music Warner Poland
Wolfgang Glum
camera Holly Fink
cut Benjamin Hembus
occupation

Death in Boarding School is a two-part television film from 2017 by Torsten C. Fischer . The political thriller was produced by tv60film for ZDF and broadcast for the first time on October 9 and 11, 2017. The action takes place in Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area.

action

1. Part "The Missing Girl"

Isabell Mosbach, an investigator at the LKA, is sent to the highly regarded boarding school “Erlengrund” to investigate the disappearance of the student Sophie Wichert without a trace. The youngster could have run away, but since she is the daughter of a high constitution protection officer who has made quite a few enemies in his professional career, a crime is also conceivable. Mosbach is initially supposed to do covert research and therefore starts at the boarding school as a teacher for English and sports. Julian Sellinger, a local police commissioner, is at her side as a middleman in her investigations. After the KTU did not find anything useful in Sophie's room, Mosbach took another look around. She found evidence of a possible pregnancy of the seventeen year old. Her classmate Felix Baumschulte comes into consideration as a potential father, but this one is very closed, as is the entire class. Mosbach has the feeling that they are all responsible for what happened there, but she does not get proper access to the students.

A few days after Sophie's disappearance, Felix is ​​found shot dead in the lake. Together with Commissioner Sellinger, Mosbach tries to clarify whether it is a suicide or a crime. Both cases may be related. The closer Mosbach gets to the teachers, parents and students at the boarding school, the more confirmed what she was greeted with right away: Nobody here says who he really is. The father of the missing girl is acting strangely, the classmates know more than they say, a teacher is trying hard to establish Mosbach's friendship and the dead boy had a strange hobby. The previous investigations among teachers and students have produced more questions than answers. But Isabell Mosbach herself has a secret: even her superiors do not know that the investigator herself was once a student at the elite boarding school and that she had to leave school at night and in fog. Not even Mosbach himself knows that her own history and the secret of Erlengrund are closely interwoven.

After the pistol with which Felix was shot is found, it is clear that it was not a suicide. What is striking is the fact that this weapon played a role over 30 years ago, in two police murders in the 1980s on Frankfurt's West Runway , where this weapon was used.

2. Part "Shadow Worlds"

While Mosbach and Sellinger put the crime puzzle together piece by piece, they discover more and more political entanglements. According to their previous investigations, Herbert Wichert belonged to the group of left activists together with Felix's father and Volker Jens. Jens was blamed for the fatal shots at the two policemen. He left for India, so that no one has been held responsible for the murders to this day. Now Jens suddenly appears again at Wichert's and asks him for a new passport and a new biography, which Wichert shouldn't cause any major problems with his position at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In order to emphasize his demand, Jens Wichert informs that he has Sophie as pledge. Wichert countered and explained to him that he had kidnapped his own daughter because Sophie was his child. Thereupon Volker Jens reveals himself to Sophie's mother and brings her to her daughter. On the way there, he comes across a police checkpoint, from which he escapes undetected, but runs into a police officer. Sophie now learns that half of her parents' life is based on more than one lie and that they had kept their biological father from her all these years. Volker Jens lets Sophie and her mother go, and both of them return home safely.

For Isabell Mosbach, her actual assignment is over, but the background of the three activists does not leave her and Julian Sellinger in peace. During their investigation the allegation was made by the son of one of the killed police officers that the murders were covered by the state and probably even commissioned in order to have a reason to crack down on the activists. Herbert Wichert fears that with the appearance of Volker Jens his machinations and his double play will come to light, and he informs Markus Dietze, the son of one of the killed police officers, where he can find Volker Jens. His plan works, and Dietze shoots Volker Jens, but is caught in the act by police officers and also shot. Wichert is then too uncomfortable for the protection of the Constitution and urged to resign.

Mosbach and Sellinger manage to persuade his classmate Till to confess to the murder of Felix. Felix owned Sophie's pistol, which she found accidentally in her father's basement and took with her to boarding school for secret target practice. In the dispute between Till and Felix, the fatal shot was then released.

Wilfried Maas from the Board of Trustees finds out that the new teacher is actually an LKA officer. He is worried about the well-kept secret of the boarding school "Erlengrund", which has been receiving financial support from a foundation in Switzerland that was set up with an SED foreign fund for many years . With this money, the GDR tried to strengthen the left-wing scene and to influence the students and their education. Today nobody wants to know anything about it anymore, and it is likely that the foundation funds come from illegal black money accounts. Isabell now learns from Maas that her father came from the GDR and was sent to the West as a spy. Here he fell in love and never returned, but then died in a car accident in Triptis , Thuringia , in the late 1970s when Isabell was twelve years old. In the face of these revelations, she doubts and suspects that he was eliminated by the Stasi . Since she lacks any evidence for this, she wants to go public with it and with the background of the ominous boarding school foundation. Maas tries to prevent this by killing a good friend of Isabell's in order to intimidate her. How Isabell Mosbach ultimately decides remains open.

reception

Audience ratings

The broadcast of the first part The disappeared girl from death in boarding school on October 9, 2017 was seen by a total of 5.72 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 18.6 percent for ZDF; in the group of 14 to 49 year old viewers , 10.0 percent was achieved. The 2nd part of Shadow Worlds on October 11, 2017 was seen by 5.06 million viewers with a market share of 17.2 percent, among the younger ones the rate was 8 percent.

Reviews

Tittelbach extensively honors the two-parter as a political thriller with rarity value, which from today's (2017) point of view deals with 30 years of German-German history, and particularly praises the director and the leading actress. The fact that the original concept of a 360-minute four-parter was condensed into two 105-minute parts left some questions unanswered for Tittelbach, but it is described as very worth seeing (5 out of 6 stars). “The film should work for the viewer. The better, the more he is ready to get involved with the political movements of the 1980s, here and there. But even those who don't like these German-German machinations should find enough attractive things to 'dock on'. "

Elmar Krekeler wrote for Die Welt : “There is an incredible amount of reality in Germany, of real history, from which you can get the most out of it. You don't need Nazis for that, in the case of 'death in boarding school' the slightly extended quarter of a century is enough. And if you have too much reality, it can take away the air to tell. "He continues:" Several re-dramatizations - there was once talk of a sequence of four hour and a half. That was not entirely without consequences for “Death in Boarding School”, but it did not cost him his life. Because cameraman Holly Fink finds ghostly underground images for all levels of the story, because he delivers an extremely fascinating record of the faces that continue to tell when there is silence, because the words are missing. "He particularly emphasizes individual actors." Because these faces can actually tell when their characters say nothing more. That of Martin Feifel especially. He plays a man who wants to regain his past and his dignity. Or the face of Joachim Król , who once again manages, within a few seconds, to play out the dangerousness of a German skewer out of his basic pull-down moderation in such a way that it becomes fearful and anxious. Or that of Manfred Zapatka , who puts all the clandestine he is capable of in the portrait of the murderous old Stasi squad and that is, as is well known, quite a lot. That of Nadja Uhl , who you want to drop various television awards in the end. Or that of Merlin Rose , who is supposed to stand pars pro toto for all the young stars who prove in “Tod im Internat” that you don't have to worry about German films.

Critics at Odyssey said: “The result is the same for every over-blown melodrama: lots of hot air and a yawning emptiness. Even if you want to disguise it a bit as a crime thriller like here. In the meantime, Nadja Uhl and Joachim Król, in particular, are permanently under-challenged. Especially with them as actors, the characters would have needed a much more intelligent, more complex guidance than the slow uncovering of their old secrets. Both actors have a genuine ambition to convey the contradictions of their characters in a sensible and emotionally engaging way. It's a shame that the dramaturgy doesn't want to know much about it. "

Harald Keller at the Frankfurter Rundschau saw a certain "indecision of the entire project". It is a “narrative complex in itself, but it was obviously not enough. The demonstrations against the Frankfurt Runway West and the murder of two police officers in this context were also woven into the fable. "

Torsten C. Fischer and Nadja Uhl at the German Television Award 2018

Awards

At the German Television Award 2018 , the film received nominations in the categories "Best Multi-Part" and "Best Actress" (Nadja Uhl).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nadja Uhl wins on Monday: Strong values ​​for ZDF two-parter. Quota meter , accessed on October 27, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Primetime check: Wednesday, October 11, 2017. Quota meter, accessed on October 27, 2017 .
  3. ^ Rainer Tittelbach : Multi-part "Death in the boarding school". September 14, 2017. Retrieved November 27, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Elmar Krekeler: Nothing is more deadly than German history. At welt.de, accessed on March 4, 2018.
  5. ^ Film review at quotenmeter.de, accessed on March 4, 2018.
  6. ↑ Harald Keller: Conspiracies in East and West. At fr.de/kultur, accessed on March 4, 2018.