Under the radar
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Under the radar |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Elmar Fischer |
| script | Henriette Buëgger |
| production |
Nicole Swidler , Fritjof Hohagen |
| music | Matthias legs |
| camera | Sten Mende |
| cut | Eva Lopez Echegoyen |
| occupation | |
| |
Under the radar is a German television - Thriller by Elmar Fischer from the year 2015 . He addresses the threat to western societies from modern Islamist terrorism and the tendency it has caused to more surveillance , thus exploring the great opposing poles of democratic constitutional states : freedom and security . He does this using a fictional terrorist attack in Berlin in which the daughter of an aspiring judge appears to be involved. This, just a public representative of state violence, is now massively the object of this violence.
Unterm Radar was premiered on September 27, 2015 at the Cologne Conference . The first broadcast on television took place two days later on WDR television . On October 14, 2015, it was shown in prime time on Erste . He was nominated for the Prix Europa 2015.
action
A suitcase in front of the Memorial Church in Berlin once again caused a false alarm from the overloaded BKA . König, the smart head of counter-terrorism, promoted past his old department head to boss after his stay in the USA, receives ministerial permission from the Secretary of State to "use all means - under the radar."
Meanwhile, the judge and single mother Elke Seeberg is lovingly preparing breakfast for her daughter who is studying Islamic studies and moving in with her Moroccan friend. Marie is happy, but leaves the apartment after a cell phone message. After the court president Elke promised his post that he would be appointed to the Federal Constitutional Court , she condemned a journalist for publishing secret service files, which he sees as an attack on freedom of the press .
Then the news comes that a public bus has exploded. Marie also used the line. When she doesn't answer the phone, Elke is very worried. But at night she is arrested in a martial SEK operation and interrogated for a long time: Marie is suspected of being an accomplice and is looking for her because her friend Khalid and his cousin, who was monitored by the BKA, set off the bomb.
The interrogation unsettled Elke and she is investigating, for example with Khalid's family and in the mosque. She falls out with her best friend Ulla, whom Marie confided in without her knowledge, and Ferdinand, her boss at the Supreme Court , when he now suspends her. Your apartment turns out to be bugged, as Ulla suspected. By chance she comes across Marie's arrest in a surveillance video at a nightclub. But even Heinrich Buch, her interrogator at the BKA, whom Elke is slowly approaching, knows nothing about it. Apparently, Marie was abducted past him with American help in order to interrogate her without control abroad (→ Extraordinary rendition ).
Elke desperately pressures Ferdinand to use his connections with the Ministry of the Interior and seeks help from the journalist Henskind, who has been convicted by her. He actually provides connections to Poland , where Elke, disguised as a Red Cross examiner, is supposed to get into the prison, where Buch Marie now suspects. While Elke was reconciled with Ulla, Buch is now completely at odds with König and is arrested by him. But the ministerial support wanes and when Ulla, Henskind and Marie's lawyer finally go public, König is arrested for his part.
Elke makes it to prison, but before she finds Marie, she is blown up and brutally thrown out. She remains undecided for hours in front of the gate. When it gets dark, Marie suddenly lies far outside and passed out by the fence. In the final scene Buch visits Marie in the hospital with flowers, while the television reports on the resignation of the interior minister and his state secretary. Ultimately, Elke and Buch leave the clinic together.
reception
Under the radar , the criticism received quite favorably, although the judgments are not entirely positive. For Harald Keller ( Frankfurter Rundschau ), for example, the film is “an important, because it is time-critical, program contribution.” It is “more valuable than those whose creators resort to pure fantasy worlds,” but “formally not completely successful.” The plot runs “as a thriller ( ...) too smooth “to convince.
For Joachim Käppner ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ), however , Unterm Radar is “a profound, exciting thriller that revolves around a central question: How far can the free constitutional state go to protect freedom?” He certifies the film as “great leading actors,” "Strong images", even "quite cinema format," although WDR and Degeto were "not known for a long time for higher film art".
For the Tagesspiegel, Kurt Sagatz bridges the gap to “Heinrich Böll's drama ' Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum ' ” from 1974 and its key question “What does terrorism do to society?” This is “just as current as it was forty years ago,” as the film shows "hauntingly". Sagatz discusses in detail the relationship between the fiction of the film and recent history as well as the concern of the author after the attack on Charlie Hebdo that reality might catch up with the film during production. However, he is noticeably cautious about the assessment and only criticizes the figure of the BKA leader as "played a little too nicely".
Ultimately, Oliver Junge ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ) feels the film is “sensitively played,” “carefully staged,” the surveillance images “terrifyingly real” and the thriller “surprisingly exciting despite all the film overload.” The investigative journalist is “an overly schematic figure” "When the plot runs the risk of sinking into the illustrated thesis (...), it takes a turn (...) and the further the film moves away from the realistic scenario, the better it becomes as a thriller."
On the other hand, Arno Frank says at Spiegel Online that the film raises “burning questions” and “unfortunately erases them far too quickly”. It seems like a solid crime scene, but in the course of the plot the plot "only takes completely improbable twists, but which point the shortest path to a halfway conciliatory end."
Awards
Elmar Fischer was awarded the Hamburg Crime Prize for the film in 2016 . The film was nominated for the competitions of the Baden-Baden TV Film Festival 2015, where Christiane Paul received the Actor Award. In 2016, she received the International Emmy Award for her acting performance in Unterm Radar .
Web links
- Under the radar in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Under the radar on ARD.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Program overview . September 26 to October 1, 2015. cologne-conference .de, accessed on October 16, 2015 .
- ↑ a b "Under the radar". Terror thriller with Christiane Paul and Heino Ferch. wdr .de, accessed on October 16, 2015 .
- ↑ Harald Keller: Daughter under suspicion of terrorism. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . fr-online.de, October 14, 2015, accessed on October 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Joachim Käppner : Monster from secrecy. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . sueddeutsche.de, October 14, 2015, accessed on October 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Kurt Sagatz: Freedom or Security? In: Der Tagesspiegel . tagesspiegel.de, October 14, 2015, accessed on October 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Oliver Junge: A suspicion is enough for the monitors. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . faz.net, October 14, 2015, accessed October 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Arno Frank: Terror Thriller "Under the Radar": Bombs, drones, mother's tears. In: Spiegel Online . spiegel.de, October 14, 2015, accessed on October 16, 2015 .
- ↑ Studio Hamburg Young Talent Award : Studio Hamburg Group: Studio Hamburg Young Talent Award 2016 - the winners , June 2, 2016
- ↑ Christiane Paul wins Emmy for best leading actress. In: Spiegel Online from November 22, 2016