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Charlotte Lindholm (Maria Furtwängler, left) and Anaïs Schmitz (Florence Kasumba): "Women can lock you up here!"
Photo: Christine Schroeder / NDR
It's getting a bit more complicated now, please stay tuned anyway.
This "crime scene" is about a sexual murder of a young German woman, which leads the investigators into the milieu of refugees, but with a handy ideological position on the complex of topics you will not be sent to bed on Sunday.
It's about right-wing prejudices, left-wing projections and a feminism that just barely misses racism.
Let's put it this way: This "crime scene" is likely to be attacked from pretty much all sides.
In times when everyone just wants to serve their ideological peer group, we see that as a plus.
To explain this review, we cannot avoid inserting a passage towards the end that can be read as a spoiler.
What does "European" mean?
But first the plot: A student is found abused and murdered in a forest in Göttingen.
An older witness believes that the fleeing, barely recognizable person near the scene of the crime was by no means "European".
The murder victim was active in helping refugees, which is why one of the commissioners is looking for the perpetrator among Syrians and Afghans, which earns her the accusation of racism.
The two investigators themselves disagree as to the direction in which the investigations should go.
Anais Schmitz (Florence Kasumba) follows the trail of a man who has already threatened several women in Göttingen and is only called "the Viking" because of a distinctive ancient dagger.
Charlotte Lindholm (Maria Furtwängler) does not want to give up a comprehensive investigation among the refugees, despite the hot lead to the alleged German perpetrator.
Is that still a rigorous will to tell the truth or is it already latent racism?
Not without problems either: Lindholm commissions a so-called biogeographical origin analysis of the found perpetrator DNA in the Netherlands, although the procedure is prohibited in Germany.
Such an investigation makes it possible to find out from which region the corresponding person could come;
However, it does not provide precise information.
Fragile ideals, latent fears
When Lindholm thought she was being threatened by a group of non-German men on the soccer field near her accommodation, she yelled: “Women are worth something here!
Women can lock you up here!« Is the feminist commissioner caught up in the web of fear of the Muslim man who hates all women as a matter of principle?
This thriller also tells of a left-liberal milieu that wears itself down between fragile ideals and latent fears of its own worldview.
The script was written by Daniel Nocke and directed by Stefan Krohmer.
In several of their more than a dozen films together - from the social satire "You have Knut" to political activists on skiing holidays (2003) to the family comedy "Neu in der Familie" about a hip Berlin patchwork family (2016) - the two have already had the milieu of the cosmopolitan left, along with the occasional betrayal of one's own attitude.
The habitat of their characters are shared kitchens and old building idylls.
Is it all just refugee folklore?
This is also the case in this "crime scene", which is the 30th case of Commissioner Lindholm in 20 years.
In one scene you see the roommate of the murdered student in the shared kitchen with a Syrian.
The young man tells frankly how he often performs a kind of “refugee folklore” in front of Germans, cooks spicy Syrian dishes and tells cruel stories of torture – so that he can match his person with the image that the German helpers need in order to share in his fate.
The film is full of moments that subtly tell of deception and self-deception.
However, the effect of the anniversary crime thriller is clouded by the fact that it was produced more than two years ago and now, against the background of a world that is turning ever more quickly in crisis mode, seems to have fallen out of time in places.
The "crime scene" - now the possible spoiler - was inspired by the murder of Maria Ladenburger.
The German student was murdered in 2016, and a year later the Afghan refugee Hussein K. was convicted as the perpetrator.
And you can also see how old the film is by the fact that the withdrawal of the German armed forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 plays no role in the conversations between the characters, although it is also about refugees from this region.
Actually, the "crime scene" should have been broadcast in December 2021, but those responsible seemed too close to the Afghanistan disaster.
In any case, the completely crazy Lindenberg-Lindholm meeting, which was filmed much later, was preferred to winter 2021.
A tactically understandable move - but the great weakness of the thriller is still obvious: the possible Afghan perpetrator acts like a template of evil, for which the filmmakers use exactly what they criticize so sharply in their German characters - projection.
As a theater of self-mutilation of a left-liberal cosmopolitanism, this »crime scene« is nevertheless timelessly good.
Rating:
7 out of 10 points
"Crime scene: revenge on the world",
Sunday, 8.15 p.m., the first