Die Schatten, die dich holen (2011)

Vera Schlink is a successful Vienna-based fund manager and has been married to Hannes for ten years. They run the company together and have a daughter. Vera meets her new neighbor, Meli, who is unemployed, and offers her a job as a secretary. Then Alex appears, a former pimp for whom Vera worked as a prostitute in Hamburg twelve years earlier. He threatens to expose her past to her husband and society, and makes demands. Back then, Alex and his sidekick Carlo had killed Vera’s gambling-addicted boyfriend, to whom they had lent money. Vera witnessed the crime and, through her testimony, sent both men to prison. At first, Vera thinks she can get rid of the intrusive man by paying him €100,000, but the next day Alex is in Hannes’s office, wanting to invest €100,000 with him. He befriends Hannes and tries to become a business partner of the Schlinks in order to join respectable society. He uses photographs and film footage to blackmail Vera into supporting his plan. Because of Vera’s conspicuous behavior, Hannes grows increasingly suspicious and believes she is having an affair with Alex. At first, Vera confides only in Meli. When Alex attacks Vera in the restroom and Hannes mistakes what he sees for consensual sex, Vera tells her husband about the past she had kept secret. Hannes confronts Alex, but Alex beats him so badly that he has to be hospitalized. Meli stops Vera from considering killing Alex and advises her to pay him a million euros. While Vera arranges a cash handover with Alex and Hannes is still in the hospital, Meli looks after Vera’s daughter. Meli also turns up at the handover, concealed: she shoots Alex, knocks Vera unconscious, and places the gun in Vera’s hand. To her disappointment, however, Vera has no money at all in the handover bag. So Meli demands a million euros in exchange for Vera’s daughter, whom she is holding captive. It turns out that Carlo was Meli’s father. She is convinced her father was innocent and that Alex was the sole perpetrator, and wants revenge on Vera for what she believes was false testimony. At the agreed cash handover, the argument between Meli and Vera escalates: Meli speeds her car, with Vera’s daughter also inside, into a harbor canal. As Meli sinks with the car, Hannes manages to rescue his daughter.