Schuldig (2009)

Professor Eva Senn, a successful science journalist from Magdeburg, loses her driver’s license because of alcohol. At the same time, her troubled marriage to physician Dr. Kurt Senn falls apart. One day, while she is out in the city with her friend Marie, Marie briefly double-parks to buy dog food. Eva, now alone in the car, is soon held up by a city bus that cannot get past. Although she has no driver’s license, she tries to back the car into an available parking space and hits student Lea Freundner. Lea is paralyzed from the waist down. After the trial, the press vilifies Eva, and even a stranger throws a bag of paint at her. The same perpetrator wants revenge for Lea’s suffering and henceforth threatens the professor with phone calls and other threats. Eva does not want to report them, however, because she feels sorry for Lea and wants to help her with new healing methods. But then Lea suddenly disappears from her apartment. Eva barricades herself inside her own apartment and cuts off social contact. Nevertheless, she wants to find Lea and finds an ally in lawyer Peer Gutenberg. After Eva discovers her decommissioned Alfa Romeo badly damaged and covered in paint in the underground garage, Gutenberg persuades her to report the threatening calls to the police. Gutenberg, who has been through something similar, advises her not to investigate any further and moves in with her for the time being. But then the stranger lures Gutenberg out of the apartment and appears there before Eva, masked. Gutenberg arrives in time, but is stabbed in the struggle. The perpetrator escapes, but the lawyer survives, seriously injured. Inspector Hellman advises Dr. Senn to go into hiding. After her colleague Professor Schnippe tells her where Lea was born, Eva travels there. The local pastor tells her the truth about Lea’s past. Her parents did not die in Kitzbühel; they died of cancer and suicide. Lea also has a brother named Jonas with a criminal record. Jonas gives Eva his address in Magdeburg. She goes to an old apartment block and, following a neighbor’s tip, manages to get inside. From some items of clothing, she realizes that Jonas is the perpetrator and that Lea is in the apartment. When Lea thinks she hears her brother, Eva realizes that Lea really does harbor feelings of revenge. Her brother appears just then and tries to stop Eva from leaving the apartment. He tries to beat the professor with a vacuum-cleaner hose, but she knocks him down with an ashtray. The police take them both away. Eva visits Gutenberg in the hospital and puts her old marriage behind her, throwing her wedding ring and other mementos into the trash along with her husband’s favorite lunchbox.