Kleine Morde (2012)

A narrator explains that the story is set in Germany in the near future. A series of rapid images follows, showing the murder of a little boy: he is photographed with a flash and then shot. The murderer remains unidentified. After the title, the backgrounds of the main characters are established. Star lawyer Julia Corner wins a difficult case, but her client, psychologist Dr. Klaus Starner, takes his own life shortly afterward, still inside the courthouse. Twelve-year-old Martin Brinkhoff, the son of a judge, is there as a visitor and witnesses both the verdict and the suicide. He is well-mannered, educated, and helpful, but is friends—against the wishes of his conservative single father—with taxi driver and gun enthusiast Victor Gumm. Police find the body of the boy from the opening scene in an abandoned industrial site. Security cameras in a shopping mall show that Martin was one of the last people to see the victim alive. Martin insists to his father and the police that he is innocent. The boy had got lost, Martin had helped him find his mother, and a friend, Bodo, had witnessed it. Martin tries to persuade his friend Victor Gumm to give him a false alibi. He insists that he is innocent, but fears the wheels of justice, which he knows very well through his father. In the end, he manages to blackmail Victor, having spied on him and witnessed him raping Martin’s teacher, Noela Muth, with whom Victor had been having a romantic relationship, in her isolated house. Contradictory witness statements, the discovery of Martin’s analog camera and his fingerprints at the crime scene, and a statement from a Mr. Gossmann all cause suspicion to focus increasingly on Martin. He is charged, and Julia Corner is hired as his lawyer. Another suspect is the missing child murderer Stefan Vierst, who has escaped from a psychiatric hospital. He had been a patient of Dr. Klaus Starner. At the prosecutor’s request, Martin is examined at a child psychology clinic. During the course of his inpatient evaluation, Martin’s father dies of a heart attack at his villa. Martin is now an orphan. Attorney Corner continues to question people in Martin’s circle. Martin’s teacher (and the former lover of Martin’s friend Victor, who was mentioned earlier as Victor’s rape victim) reaffirms that Martin is helpful and truthful. Attorney Corner eventually finds the means in a shed on witness Gossmann’s property to thoroughly discredit his testimony in court. It also turns out that Martin’s camera had gone missing in Victor’s taxi, and that his fingerprints were at the scene because Martin used to play there often. In court, Viktor Gumm withdraws the statement he had just made—that he was driving around with Martin at the time of the crime—after his grandfather notices the inconsistency in the courtroom and says so aloud. The trial is adjourned, and Victor himself comes under the investigators’ scrutiny, especially after Noela, Martin’s teacher, finally tells Ms. Corner about her rape and points to Victor’s large collection of weapons and his affinity for violence.