You have to see it to believe it.
The feature film directed by Volker Heise has everything of a bad thriller: three German robbers, a little stupid on the edges, capture about twenty hostages and sympathize with the journalists present on the spot.
Surprise… Everything is true in the documentary “The Gladbeck Hostage” broadcast this summer on Netflix.
Absolutely everything !
The director, unknown to the general public, twists his neck to the codes of the genre by not posing any serious voice-overs or testimonials from survivors or experts.
Black and white photographs, excerpts from police radio or television news dating from August 1988 make up this one-and-a-half-hour story.
The sometimes shaky and blurry images speak for themselves.
And that is enough to carry the spectator, from the first minutes, in this surreal and captivating atmosphere.
However, the story begins like many other news items: two armed men enter a bank, take two employees hostage and shoot.
It is 7:30 a.m. on August 16, 1988 and this shot marks the start of a 54-hour run across Germany for Hans-Jurgen Rosner, 31, and his sidekick, Dieter Degowski.
Ready to "end up in the cemetery", the two accomplices, joined by Hans' girlfriend, pistol in one hand, cigarette in the other, extend their list of hostages by seizing a bus in Bremen. twenty passengers.
And there, the human and media fiasco begins...
Show or manhunt?
Surrealist is the word.
Stuck in Cologne, the three robbers, armed to the teeth, are served coffee by the gathered onlookers.
An 18-year-old woman, seated next to Dieter, has a gun pointed at her and answers questions from reporters.
The editor of a local newspaper voluntarily climbs into the car.
And we don't understand anything anymore.
Are we watching a hostage crisis or an incredible soap opera?
The criminals thus playing with their image of "good pasta" oust – for a short time – the dangers.
Everything becomes entertainment both for the editors crowded around the trio of brigands and for the latter who acts with total and disconcerting freedom for nearly two days.
They will go so far as to ask for an almost naked and handcuffed policeman in their car.
Crazy !
These three become actors on the run, even giving interviews.
However, behind this picturesque side, the threat is very real.
A 15-year-old boy is killed.
The finger of the thugs is always placed on the trigger of the well-marked gun.
They keep repeating that they don't want to live.
The police ?
Although she begins a manhunt, she misses her operation and releases one of the caught robbers a few minutes later.
The chase resumes and takes with it the cinephile both lost and held in suspense by this suspense: who will survive?
Editor's note:
4.5/5
"The Gladbeck Hostage", German documentary by Volker Heise (2022) on Netflix.
1h30
