Early Birds (2023)

Annika and Caro briefly cross paths at a private party in a loft in Zurich. Caro, who lives in the same apartment building as the host, Oliver, leaves the party, taking a few valuables with her. Annika, on the other hand, spends the night with Oliver. The next morning, she witnesses two men arriving to sell Oliver several packages of cocaine. When one of the men declines to count the money for the drugs, Oliver becomes suspicious and checks the quality of a second package. He discovers that it contains no drugs and that he is being set up. He opens fire, killing both men, but is himself fatally wounded. Annika takes the sports bag containing the money and drugs and hides in Caro’s apartment to escape Agon. She had seen him at the party the previous evening; he had been driving for the two men now lying dead in Oliver’s living room and was supposed to wait by the car for their return. Meanwhile, fearing complications with the drug deal, Agon rushes into Oliver’s apartment. As soon as he sees the bodies, he flees the building when he hears the sirens of the emergency services approaching, alerted by the gunshots. Annika, for her part, escapes via the attic, where she takes Caro’s work clothes; Caro works as a care worker for the elderly. Annika crosses the roof to the neighboring building and eventually makes her way back down to the street. The emergency responders, however, refuse to let her into the building, so she cannot retrieve the stolen drugs and cash from Caro’s apartment. While Inspector Thomas Roland begins investigating at Oliver’s apartment, Annika goes to the Zürich Nord retirement home so that, accompanied by Caro, she can get past the police and into the cordoned-off apartment building. In Caro’s apartment, the two women are questioned by investigators. As soon as the police officers leave, Caro throws the sports bag, wrapped in a garbage bag, out the window onto the flat roof of the neighboring building in the courtyard. Shortly afterward, the investigators return to search the apartment. When the search turns up neither the cash nor the drugs, Annika is allowed to leave the building, but Agon recognizes her outside, and she flees by taxi. After dark, Caro climbs down over the neighbors’ balconies to the flat roof and retrieves the bag. However, she accidentally drops it onto a car parked in the courtyard. Its alarm draws Agon’s attention to her; he is still waiting outside the building. She flees through back courtyards and eventually loses Agon in a bar. Caro and Annika leave the city in Caro’s car, but Agon manages to take a photo of its license plate with his phone. During a stop at her sugar daddy Roy’s place, Annika gets the keys to his chalet. The women continue on, first stopping at a gas station, where Annika takes painkillers once again, and then heading to Caro’s brother Milanko, with whom Caro’s son Medo lives because she is out on probation. As Caro says goodbye to Medo, Milanko realizes that Caro’s pursuers have arrived and lends the women his sports car so they can get away unnoticed. At another stop, at a fast-food restaurant, the women argue and decide to continue their escape separately. Annika goes to the restroom, realizes she is coughing up blood, and collapses unconscious after taking painkillers and drugs. Agon’s accomplices drag her to the parking lot and throw her onto the back seat of a car. Before the two men can get in, Caro arrives in her brother’s car and runs them over. Because surveillance cameras have recorded the car’s license plate, Caro decides to abandon the vehicle in a wooded area and continue her journey by bus. Upon arriving at the chalet, Annika tells her companion that she has cancer, that her operation came too late, and that she will die soon. The women decide to enjoy their time in the secluded mountain cabin with its hot tub before fleeing abroad. But it does not come to that: Inspector Thomas Roland, a corrupt police officer who runs a lucrative side business selling drugs and owns the drugs the women are carrying, finds them at the chalet in Aigle. A scuffle breaks out, during which Annika knocks the officer down with an antler, one of whose points breaks off and remains embedded in his back. However, since Roland’s business partners have taken Caro’s son Medo hostage, the women set off back to Zurich with the now-helpless officer. At the bar where they meet the criminals, Thomas Roland realizes too late that he has been replaced by his young police colleague Stefan Hugentobler, who has now taken his place in the drug underworld. Thomas Roland is shot dead by his former business partner. Caro demands to see her son, but the drug dealers want their cocaine back first. Annika says that the drugs had been cut and that Agon had been skimming money for himself behind his boss’s back, so Agon is shot dead too. Annika throws herself into the line of fire to take the bullet meant for Caro, sacrificing her own life to save her. Caro leaves the bar with her brother and son, taking the cash with her. The young police officer Hugentobler is left as the sole survivor among the three bodies.