Oscar winner Caroline Link is making a series for the first time - and what a series!
"Safe" is now running on ZDFneu - and encourages more humanity.
This series should be dedicated to all of us.
As the perfect medicine against what is making our society more and more ill: a lack of real communication and attention.
How wonderfully quiet it is in the practice rooms of Katinka (Judith Bohle) and Tom (Carlo Ljubek).
And with how much warmth and openness they meet their little patients.
You would love to take a few lessons with Katinka and Tom yourself.
Because the two child and youth therapists in Caroline Link's phenomenal series "Safe" don't just help girls and boys.
A look into the souls of children is a look into your own mirror – if you heal their wounds, you always heal yourself.
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Why is Ronja (Lotte Shirin Keiling) wearing makeup – and how close is her relationship with her dad?
The girl puzzles the therapist.
© Bella Halben
What a masterpiece Caroline Link has done again!
It is well known that the Oscar winner ("Nowhere in Africa", 2003) is excellent at working with children.
From "Beyond the Silence" (1996) to "The Boy Must Go to Fresh Air" (2018) - the 58-year-old Munich director directs, the young actors surpass themselves.
So now Link is choosing the series format for the first time and you can't help but keep looking on and on and on.
Luckily, all eight episodes will not only be broadcast on ZDFneo from November 8, 2022 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 8:15 p.m., but that they are all already available in the ZDF media library.
Caroline Link's ZDFneo series "Safe" is reminiscent of "In Treatment"
The basic constellation is reminiscent of the successful series "In Treatment", which is also well worth seeing.
In each episode we look over the shoulder of Katinka or Tom during a therapy session.
With Ronja, for example, who is already wearing make-up at the age of six and has a particularly close relationship with her father;
or 16-year-old Sam, a delinquent being passed from one foster family to the next.
Little Ronja in particular, played by Lotte Shirin Keiling with incredible conviction, immediately casts a spell over her.
"If I admit something to you, you can't hit me," she says abruptly to the therapist.
And when she objects: "I would never hit you," Ronja replies with a sentence that the girl has probably heard herself: "Sometimes you deserve it.
A smack like that never hurt anyone.” And when she then plays with little dolls and lets the father doll kiss the Ronja doll all the time, you catch yourself thinking whether there might be abuse involved.
And why does Ronja bury the figure that represents her little brother deep in the sandbox?
What's behind it?
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Always at eye level: therapist Tom (Carlo Ljubek) with Sam (Valentin Oppermann).
© Julia von Vietinghoff
Judith Bohle, who is a member of the ensemble at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, plays this therapist brilliantly, who neither makes the mistake of judging prematurely nor allowing herself to be provoked by the clever tricks of her young patients.
At first glance, she seems like someone who can't be bothered by anything, just like Tom, who Carlo Ljubek plays just as engagingly.
Both have to endure much;
both have clever strategies for getting the other person to open up.
And neither of them have complete control over their own lives.
That too is pleasantly human and close to reality.
“Safe” is a tutoring session in mindfulness
In general, you never have the feeling of following a fictional story.
Caroline Link, who also wrote the screenplay, consulted two psychologists.
And be inspired by a woman who inspired her early on.
"When I was at school, I came across a book by the American child psychotherapist Virginia Axline from the 1970s: 'Dibs.
In search of himself'.
I read it with great fascination when I was 17.
A supposedly autistic child is gently accompanied by a therapist on his way into the world,” recalls Link.
So it's no coincidence that Katinka also has a card on the table with a saying by Virginia Axline: "Enter into Children's Play and you will find the Place where their Minds, Hearts and Souls meet.
- "When you engage in the children's play, you will find the place where their minds, hearts and souls meet." Link has engaged in the children's play, once again.
The result is a touching, truthful, instructive story about the way we treat each other - and how we could improve this interaction.
Eight tutoring sessions in mindfulness, caring, non-violent communication.
Works wonders.
Eight tutoring sessions in mindfulness, caring, non-violent communication.
Works wonders.
Eight tutoring sessions in mindfulness, caring, non-violent communication.
Works wonders.