Death in the mountains

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Movie
Original title Death in the mountains
Country of production Austria
original language German
Publishing year 2013
length 90 minutes
Rod
Director Nils Willbrandt
script Maja Brandstetter
Wolfgang Brandstetter
production Thomas Hroch
Gerald Podgornig
music Jürgen Corner
camera Michael Schreitel
cut Vessela Martschewski
occupation

Death in the Mountains is an Austrian television film directed by Nils Willbrandt from 2013. The main roles are played by Ursula Strauss , Robert Atzorn and Fritz Karl . The film had its German television premiere on May 6, 2013 on ZDF .

action

The young doctor Clara Lang is on a mountain tour in the Austrian Alps with her boyfriend David Tanner . On their way to the summit, they come through a cordoned-off area high above their home town of Kalltach. When they arrive in the snow-covered part of the mountains, they discover a corpse in the snow. After initial investigations, it is certain that the stranger does not come from the area. It could be a vacationer who slipped into a crevasse here and has now come to the surface after years. As the head of the local newspaper, David senses an exciting case and begins to research. However, the mayor does not think so because he is concerned about the reputation of the tourist destination. When David set off again the next day to find the body, he too was suddenly found dead in the restricted area. Clara doesn't really want to believe in a coincidence, especially since someone was obviously in her house and David's camera has disappeared.

David's father, Jan Tanner, immediately sets off for Kalltach when he receives news of his son's death. Clara is initially quite dismissive of Jan. That changes when Jan convinces her that David could not have died in an accident. It is obvious to him that someone wanted to prevent David from researching the glacier corpse. So Clara and Jan take over the work of the police, who don't seem to care about either of the two deaths. Clara and Jan track down an environmental scandal based on references to a Munich forwarding company where the man was likely to have worked at the time, the peculiar rashes in the region and massive cell mutations in the glacier corpse. Years ago, when the town's mine had to be closed, the mayor of Kalltach agreed to use one of the tunnels as a storage facility for radioactive waste.

Clara has to find out that not only the mayor, but also her own father is embroiled in the machinations. It was also he who had thrown the unskilled worker from the transport company who delivered the barrels into the crevasse. Barrels were damaged in an accident and radioactive material leaked, so no one should find the man. However, Clara's father became contaminated and is now noticing the first symptoms of the disease. Clara herself came into contact with the barrels in her search for the truth and is afraid of what will now come to her. The mayor has already drawn the consequences of his guilt and hanged himself.

For the murder of David, Clara unexpectedly finds clues to his superior Raffael. When he realizes that she could convict him, he follows her into the mountains. He admits that he had no other advice to dissuade David from investigating the story further. He found out about the illegal camp at the time and secured financial support for his silence from the newspaper editorial team, which was his life's work and which he did not want to be ruined.

After Raffel was arrested, Clara leaves the radioactively contaminated Kalltach forever.

background

Death in the Mountains was produced by the Austrian Mona Film on behalf of ZDF and ORF and filmed from June 12 to July 12, 2012 under the working title Red Snow in Salzburg and the surrounding area and in Vienna . Areas on the Großglockner in the Austrian Alps, the Hallein salt mine and the waterfall near Golling served as alpine natural scenery . The story itself is fictional, but the circumstances are not. Again and again there are reports in the media of the often unexplained problem of the storage of radioactive waste, which was taken up here as a basis.

Ursula Strauss commented on the filming and her role as Clara Lang that she “always had the feeling that the character always stays upright despite the emotional abysses and keeps her head up as much as possible.” Strauss grew up in the foothills of the Alps and is familiar with the activities of skiing or hiking in summer. Since she feels at home in the mountains, she really liked working on the film and “satisfied a long longing”.

reception

Audience rating

The first broadcast of Death in the Mountains on May 6, 2013 was seen by 5.75 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 19.0 percent for ZDF .

Reviews

Rainer Tittelbach from Tittelbach.tv wrote: “Research thrillers and disaster thrillers meet family drama against an alpine backdrop. 'Death in the Mountains' is a well-known genre mix that works better than usual in this German-Austrian co-production. The reason: leading actress Ursula Strauss. What your face is not able to express: the whole range of emotions, joy, sympathy, self-confidence, deep hurt and bitter pain, disgust, sadness, disgust, defiance - and sometimes all of this freezes into just a single facial expression! "

Kino.de judged: "An alpine eco-thriller with evil machinations on the surface, under which a tragic father-son relationship is worked up post mortem and little by little an even more dramatic father-daughter story comes to light." Nils Willbrandt's staging is bursting with visual power and is visually convincing, even though one would occasionally have wished for a little more subtlety - for example in the finale that was applied too thickly. "

Jan Wiele from the FAZ said somewhat sarcastically: “Of course, God's creation fell deeply in this television film too, how deeply only has to be found out step by step and with great difficulty. So while one is still mourning the modern Heimat film (faked for a few minutes), which could have turned into a pretty tragic comedy about Austrian country eggs, the merciless machinery of the alpine thriller 'Scandal in the restricted area', which of course should not be called but rather simple, monolithic and a bit brazen: 'Death in the Mountains'. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Death in the Mountains. In: monafilm.tv. Retrieved April 3, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Death in the Mountains in the ZDF press booklet.
  3. ↑ Ursula Strauss: One hell after the other at 3sat.de, accessed on April 3, 2020.
  4. ↑ Audience rating at quotenmeter.de, accessed on April 3, 2020.
  5. ↑ Rainer Tittelbach : The magic of the Alps - but the actual natural event is called Ursula Strauss, accessed on Tittelbach.tv , accessed on April 3, 2020.
  6. ↑ Big Manni at Kino.de , accessed on April 3, 2020.
  7. ↑ Jan Wiele: “Scandal in the restricted area” at faz.net , accessed on April 3, 2020.