Under the ice
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Under the ice |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2005 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Aelrun Goette |
| script | Thomas Stiller (based on an idea by Holger Badura ) |
| production | Ernst Ludwig Ganzert |
| music | Martin Todsharow |
| camera | Jens Harant |
| cut | Andreas Zitzmann |
| occupation | |
| |
Unter dem Eis is a film by the German director Aelrun Goette from 2005. The family psychodrama is a cinema co-production by EIKON Media with SWR and RBB for the SWR series Debut in the Third with the support of MFG Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.
action
Jenny loves her life: her husband, her seven year old son Tim and her home on the outskirts of town. When she comes home from her friend Sandra one afternoon, she finds her completely distraught son crying in the basement. Tim leads them into the forest, where Sandra's seven-year-old daughter lies dead in the snow. Everything indicates that Tim is complicit in Luzi's death. Out of panic and to protect her son, Jenny instructs Tim to hide the truth. Nobody should associate him with Luzi's death - not even Michael, his own husband and father - who as a police investigator does everything possible to solve the case.
Jenny firmly believes that she can protect Tim and her family and does not realize that her son is breaking up because of the secret. He crosses borders and rebels, invents strange stories, can no longer sleep at night and is plagued by nightmares.
When Tim's class teacher, Frau Pötter, asked about Tim's abnormalities, Jenny declined. Michael does not escape the changed behavior of his son and his wife either. However, his attempts to confront Jenny remain half-hearted. And he too closes his eyes to the increasingly clear signs of the breakdown of his family.
The more Tim changes, the more desperately Jenny suppresses reality. And the more she hides his distress, the greater the danger of discovery. She entangles herself and her son in a web of lies. Tim withdraws more and more, lies and, like his mother, builds up an illusory world.
Jenny threatens to collapse under the weight of her guilt. Desperate, she turns to her mother Hildegard, but she doesn't want to know the truth. And suddenly a completely new possibility opens up for Jenny: you can live with a lie. Thanks to Tim's class teacher, Michael finally learns that his son has behavioral problems and needs professional help. After a sleepless night, Michael makes a momentous decision.
Aelrun Goette leaves the turn of the film and thus the end to the viewer. However, despite this open ending, it becomes clear that Michael discovered the secret.
theme
Under the ice is a film about fear of the truth. It is the story of a fateful mother-son relationship in which a child pays the price for adult repression by destroying his soul - a story about silence.
criticism
"The feature film debut of an award-winning documentary filmmaker ( The children are dead ) is convincing due to the sophisticated story, dense atmosphere and good actors, even if the potential of the story is not always exhausted."
Awards
- Adolf Grimme Prize 2007 - Category "Fiction / Special"
- MFG-Star Baden-Baden 2005
Individual evidence
- ^ Under the Ice in the Lexicon of International Films
Web links
- Under the ice in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Under the ice at filmportal.de
- Here the cold creeps under your jacket , interview with Aelrun Goette in ZEIT (2005)
- * Interview with the managing director Ernst Ludwig Ganzert about winning the Grimme Prize ( Memento from April 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive )