Nacht ohne Morgen (2011)

The cancer-stricken lawyer Jasper Dänert wants to solve a long-ago case before his impending death—a case he was unable to solve as a prosecutor 19 years earlier. In 1992, Dänert, then a prosecutor in Potsdam, led the investigation into a murder that affected him deeply. A 16- or 17-year-old boy was found dead in a wooded area in Brandenburg. His identity remained unknown, as did the identity of the killer. The only thing known was that he had worked as a rent boy in Berlin under the alias “Jimmy.” His real name could not be established, partly because apparently no one had reported him missing. Dänert asks village police officer Larissa Brandow for help; when she was 14, she found the body of the 16-year-old boy. With stoic calm, he guides her toward identifying the victim and reconstructing what happened. In the end, it becomes clear that Dänert himself had been in a romantic relationship with Jimmy. Jimmy died after an argument with Dänert, and it remains unclear whether his death was an accident or a murder—though Dänert covered it up either way. He asks Brandow to give him time to kill himself. As a subplot, the breakdown of his marriage is followed: he had taken refuge in it a year after the murder of the rent boy he loved. The cool acceptance of his wife, who devotes herself to her career, contrasts with the carefree joy of his love for Jimmy and of his encounter with one last rent boy, with whom Dänert spends a night at the end, after which he chooses death. He also resolves his wife’s concealed infidelity by asking his friend, “Do you love her?”