Andrea lässt sich scheiden (2024)

Police officer Andrea lives in the countryside. She has only recently left her husband Andy and has already accepted a job offer from the criminal investigation department in St. Pölten. At a birthday party for her current colleague Georg at the local inn, she gets into an argument with her drunk estranged husband. He tries to persuade her to make a fresh start in their relationship. She refuses and asks him to agree to a divorce. Angrily, he throws her out of his car, where they had been talking. She just manages to take his car keys away to stop him driving home drunk. Upset, he sets off on foot. A short while later, she is driving home along a country road. A call from her father, whom she moved in with after leaving Andy, causes a brief lapse in her attention, and something hits the front of her car with great force. When she gets out, she realizes that she has run over her husband. After unsuccessful attempts to revive him, she flees the scene in shock. Later that same night, her colleague comes to her door with the news that her husband is dead and reports that the driver involved immediately called the police and turned himself in. Andrea goes with him to the scene and realizes that Franz, a teacher and sober alcoholic, believes himself to be the culprit who actually ran over Andy’s body. While Andrea tries to cover her tracks by having her VW repaired by a local mechanic, Franz starts drinking again. Racked with guilt, Andrea seeks Franz out repeatedly and watches in horror as he loses his grip on life more and more. But the chain of unfortunate events does not let up for Andrea, either. She sounds out Walter, her future colleague in St. Pölten, about whether she could start work at the criminal investigation department earlier, and he agrees. Then her father, who has difficulty walking, falls down the stairs and has to go to the hospital. Just as she lies down after this exhausting night in her new apartment in St. Pölten, Walter rings her doorbell, claiming he wants to welcome her with a few groceries for the apartment. Over coffee, Walter gradually reveals that traces of paint from a white VW were found on Andy’s clothes, and that Andrea is the only possible culprit. However, he makes it clear that he will keep his findings to himself because he likes her as more than just a colleague. He reinforces this by revealing the carefully guarded secret that he considers himself “guilty” of his mother’s death because of misguided care—so now each of them knows a dark secret about the other. Andrea plays along for a while, but then turns herself in at her local police station to her colleague Georg and also confesses to Franz, with whom she has developed a friendly relationship, that she was the one who ran over her husband. Since the police have eventually impounded her car and suspended her from duty, Franz gives her his car so she can drive to St. Pölten to visit her father in the hospital.