Liebe bis in den Mord (2016)

On the evening of her future mother-in-law’s birthday party, Sonja is raped on her way home by Adrian, a childhood friend with whom she had shared her first kisses and sworn eternal love when she was 15. After telling her that he still loves her and had only taken what was rightfully his, Adrian disappears. Traumatised, Sonja makes her way to her sister Birgit, who advises her not to report the crime, since her future mother-in-law, Katharina, disapproves of her anyway and she might lose her fiancé, Thomas, as a result. Fifteen years later, Sonja is happily married to Thomas and has a 15-year-old daughter named Anna. Thomas is now managing the local dairy together with his mother. The fate of many families in the village is tied to the company’s precarious financial situation. Thomas turns to his bank adviser, Siegfried Westphal, just as Adrian unexpectedly reappears. Adrian had founded a successful company, sold it for a profit, and now wants to invest his fortune in the local dairy. Katharina and Thomas are delighted by this unexpected chance to save the business, and Thomas spontaneously invites Adrian to dinner. Sonja is shocked by the surprise, especially when Adrian openly says over dinner that he is probably Anna’s father, since he and Sonja had a secret relationship 15 years earlier. Thomas, who does not know the truth, throws Adrian out and confronts Sonja, but she dismisses the story as a lie. Soon the whole village knows the rumours about the alleged paternity, prompting Katharina to secretly arrange for Adrian and Anna to have a DNA test. The results confirm that Adrian is Anna’s father, whereupon Sonja confesses to the rape and reports Adrian to the police. Thomas stands by her, while Katharina rejects her all the more. Katharina had always been against Sonja, who comes from a modest background and whom she considered unworthy of her son. The village police officer, Baumgartl, questions Sonja’s sister about what happened 15 years earlier, but Birgit says she cannot clearly remember an assault. Her farm’s fate also depends on the dairy. Meanwhile, Adrian does everything he can to win Sonja and Anna over. Since many jobs in the village depend on his investment in the dairy, and Sonja wants to get rid of him, the whole village soon turns against her. Eventually, Thomas is killed in a mysterious motorcycle accident. Sonja suspects that Adrian caused her husband’s death. But with no evidence either of that or of the rape, she seems helpless. So she goes on the offensive and invites Adrian to dinner. In the meantime, Officer Baumgartl discovers that Adrian changed his rental car, allegedly because he had caused paint damage while parking it. She has the rental car and Thomas’s motorcycle examined and looks into Adrian’s past. Some time ago, he lost his wife and daughter in an accident. Both looked so much like Sonja and Anna that they could be mistaken for them. Meanwhile, Birgit brings the police the clothes Sonja wore at the time, which Birgit had secretly kept in an old wardrobe. At dinner that evening, Sonja initially seems intent on seducing Adrian, but then provokes him, apparently hoping he will rape her again so she will finally have evidence of the crime. When Adrian threatens her with a knife, she knocks him out with a vase, runs upstairs, and looks for Thomas’s rifle. Birgit appears, and Adrian takes her hostage at knifepoint. Sonja confronts him with the rifle just as the police officer arrives and arrests him. Thanks to her successful investigation, Sonja’s old clothes bearing traces from that night, and Adrian’s taking Birgit hostage, the officer now has enough evidence of Adrian’s guilt. In the end, Sonja, as the new managing director, forms a cooperative with the bank and the farmers against Katharina’s wishes, and manages to avert the dairy’s financial crisis. Anna sets in motion a reconciliation between Katharina and Sonja.