Die Lügen der Sieger (2014)

Fabian Groys is a successful investigative journalist at the (fictional) Berlin news magazine Die Woche. When he gets nowhere with a story involving a secret informant in the German armed forces, his boss assigns him the new trainee, Nadja. To keep her busy, Groys puts her on the case of a man who jumped into an animal enclosure and was fatally injured by a lion. She discovers that the man had worked for a waste-disposal company called Kuros and had been exposed to toxic substances there. While investigating in the Ruhr region, they learn that the worker had gradually been losing his memory. A second employee at the company’s smelting plant had also suffered health problems. A Berlin PR agency has been hired by TT Holding—the parent company of Kuros—to influence German federal legislation so that certain pollutants, released during the company’s recycling operations, are subject to less restrictive monitoring. A PR lobbyist is coached for a meeting with Minister Delbrück, who is responsible for the matter; the meeting later takes place in an upscale restaurant. Meanwhile, the agency has hacked Groys’s work and personal computers. Further investigations by Groys and Nadja reveal that both Kuros employees had previously served in Afghanistan with the German armed forces. At the same time, Groys receives important information from an unknown source, including a confidential medical file belonging to one of the Kuros employees. After learning more through a meeting with the widow of one of the two employees, the journalists pursue the story, which grows into an increasingly major scandal.