Todesengel (2019)

The film begins with a duel: a man and a woman face each other with pistols aimed. They exchange a few sentences hinting at a close relationship in the past. Two shots ring out at the same time. In Hamburg, the body of a journalist is found. Its condition immediately reminds Chief Inspector Jan Fabel—the man in the opening scene—of an earlier series of murders that the press attributed to the Angel of St. Pauli. The victims were all men who had become violent toward women, as pimps, clients, or in other ways. They were killed by a cut to the throat, but while bleeding to death they could still watch as they were castrated. Inspector Wolff notes that the new case follows the same pattern. The very next day, an employee of NHG, the company the journalist had been investigating, is murdered in a similar way. More or less at the same time, Margarethe Paulus, who is in prison for similar crimes, escapes. However, she cannot be the Angel of St. Pauli or be responsible for the current murders, since her imprisonment gives her alibis. Inspectors Fabel and Wolff, along with criminal psychologist Eckhardt, are initially baffled. The investigation takes Jan Fabel and Anna Wolf back into the past, which is recounted in complex flashbacks. At a Stasi military school known as the boarding school, young women who had spent their childhoods in care homes are trained as killers under their commanding officer, Uncle Georg—Georg Drescher—and the commandant, Comrade Colonel Ulrich Adebach. Three of the girls—Anke, Liane, and Margarethe—become close friends and decide to stay in touch forever, as sisters or Valkyries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Anke and Margarethe keep their names, while Liane becomes Sylvie Achtenhagen. Years later, she befriends Jan Fabel and writes a book about the series of murders attributed to the Angel of St. Pauli. She is the woman in the film’s opening scene and the Angel of St. Pauli. Uncle Georg Drescher remains in contact with the killers and tries to pass on their skills. Comrade Colonel Adebach has become a businessman and is a senior figure at NHG. Under his son-in-law Simon Blohm, the company tries to recycle plastic waste while accepting serious health risks for its workers. The journalist was investigating NHG’s machinations, and Adebach has Anke kill him. Adebach himself murders Anke when she becomes a threat to him, but is eventually confronted and shot by Liane / Sylvie. Margarethe poisons Drescher. At the end, the film returns to the opening scene, and it becomes clear that Jan Fabel shot his former girlfriend, Sylvie / Liane.