Der Fall Collini (2019)

After the respected industrialist Jean-Baptiste Meyer is murdered in his hotel suite in Berlin in 2001, retired former guest worker Fabrizio Collini turns himself in to the police in the lobby without resistance as the presumed perpetrator. Young lawyer Caspar Leinen, who has only just been admitted to the bar, is appointed as his court-appointed defense attorney. When he learns that the dead man is “Hans” Meyer, who had been like a surrogate father to him, whose late grandson Philipp had gone to school with him, and whose granddaughter Johanna he was, or still is, in a relationship with, Leinen wants to declare himself conflicted and withdraw from the case. But his former university professor Richard Mattinger, who now represents the victim’s family as a private prosecutor, advises Leinen to continue with the case: a criminal defense attorney must not let feelings get in the way in court. Since Collini stubbornly remains silent, the case seems hopeless. To shorten the trial, Mattinger suggests that Leinen persuade Collini to confess; in return, the senior public prosecutor will argue for manslaughter rather than murder. But when the murder weapon is presented in court, Leinen remembers that Philipp once showed him the same weapon in Meyer’s library. It is a Walther P38, which is rarely used as a murder weapon nowadays. Leinen secures a several-day adjournment of the trial and travels to Montecatini, Collini’s home village, while his father studies files on Nazi crimes in Ludwigsburg. Leinen meets local resident Claudio Lucchesi, who tells him what happened in Montecatini in 1944: As a young SS-Sturmbannführer, Hans Meyer led a reprisal operation in Tuscany following an attack by partisans. The defendant’s father was among those selected at random. Meyer forced young Collini to watch as his father, gravely wounded by the firing squad, was finished off with several shots from a pistol. Lucchesi’s father had served as an interpreter and was therefore executed as a collaborator shortly after the war. Mattinger tries to stop Leinen from bringing this up in court by dangling lucrative commercial cases before him, but Leinen refuses. When Lucchesi gives his testimony in court, Collini is now also willing to talk about his motive. Mattinger says this is irrelevant: Collini and his sister had already filed a criminal complaint against Meyer in 1968, and the proceedings had been discontinued at the time. Leinen discovers that the case had not been closed on the basis of the question of guilt; rather, following a change in the law shortly beforehand, Nazi crimes such as Meyer’s were classified only as manslaughter and had therefore become time-barred. Leinen confronts Mattinger, who had also been involved in the legislative process at the time, and Mattinger finally admits that this was unjust. When the verdict is due to be announced the next day, the judge explains that Collini died by suicide during the night. Leinen receives by post a photograph showing Collini with his father, along with a brief note from his now-deceased client.