Toter Winkel (2017)

The Krasniqi family have lived in Germany for 17 years. The family consists of father Fazil, mother Dafina, 15-year-old Anyá, and two younger siblings. In the middle of the night, men in police uniforms rouse them from their beds. The men claim that the immigration authorities have ordered their immediate deportation and that they must return to their homeland, Kosovo. In an unobserved moment, Anyá manages to escape. As several men pursue her, one of them is hit by a truck while crossing the motorway and fatally injured. Master hairdresser Karl Holzer leads a quiet life with his wife Elsa in a small German town. When Manuel Retzlav, the childhood friend of his adult son Thomas, is run over by a truck at night, rumors emerge that the young man may have belonged to a right-wing extremist terrorist group. Holzer learns from Zeiler, a police officer he is friends with, that there is evidence against Manuel. Since Manuel was friends with Thomas, Thomas too comes under suspicion of belonging to the right-wing terrorist scene. Karl Holzer is tormented by terrible doubts about whether he can trust his son and his claim that he had nothing to do with the matter and was no longer in contact with Manuel—even though he wants to trust him at any cost. It becomes painfully clear to him that he has, in part, passed on questionable values to Thomas, and may have helped him choose the wrong path. Suddenly, Holzer starts noticing things that feed his doubts. Thomas tells his young daughter Nora that the rabbits he breeds must remain purebred, and his granddaughter surprises Karl by singing the patriotic song “Die Wacht am Rhein” with unsettlingly accurate lyrics. Thomas is also bothered by the high proportion of foreigners in schools. Anyá Krasniqi, who has taken refuge at a classmate’s home and is hiding there, tries to contact her family on her phone. But she gets nowhere, receiving only text messages saying that she must get in touch urgently. After a while, the pleas become more and more insistent. She is told that her family is being held in secure custody without her. Meanwhile, Karl Holzer searches for evidence that would clear his son, trying to numb the fear that has taken hold of him. Instead, however, he finds more and more clues suggesting that Thomas is not at all as innocent as he has repeatedly assured his father he is. Then Karl Holzer happens upon a phone containing Anyá’s desperate attempts to reach her father, and he can no longer turn a blind eye, however much he wants to. His son’s reaction when Karl storms into his house and beats him is sobering. Thomas says that something has to be done about the many foreigners in the country, who are now even taking to the streets to demonstrate for their rights. After all, Thomas says, Karl taught him that you have to act when something bothers you. Talking alone is not enough. The full extent of what Thomas and his like-minded associates have done is so terrible that it is almost impossible to put into words. This was not the first time they had disguised themselves as police officers and dragged a family from its beds at night in the house where, alongside the Krasniqis, other foreign families live. They drove the Krasniqis to a deserted place where a pit had already been dug. By the time the couple realized what their tormentors intended to do, it was too late. They murdered the father, mother, and their two young children with shots to the back of the neck at the edge of the pit, then buried them there. Thomas Holzer implores his father that Anyá Krasniqi is a danger to him because she saw him that night. Karl tells him that they can only put an end to this together, and dismisses every other solution Thomas suggests. He keeps to himself what he is really planning. So Karl Holzer poses as Fazil Krasniqi’s lawyer and sends Anyá a text message proposing a meeting place in a parking lot. From there, he says, he will take the young woman to her family. Anyá is suspicious, but she is also close to breaking point, as she longs to be reunited with her family. She gets into Holzer’s car. When he stops to use the restroom on the way, she happens to find her father’s bracelet in the glove compartment. When she panics and asks Holzer about it, he tells her that her entire family is dead. What this unleashes in Anyá is sheer horror. Almost apathetically, she gets out of the car at the meeting place Karl Holzer arranged with his son. There, in a disused quarry, Thomas is already waiting with a pistol in his hand and orders Anyá to get on her knees. Karl Holzer pleads with his son, saying he cannot do this, that there is still good in him, that he cannot pull the trigger. But Thomas does just that. No shot is fired, however—not on the second or third attempt either. Holzer has swapped the gun for his own identical but defective one, hoping until the last moment that Thomas would not pull the trigger. The police, whom Holzer had informed earlier, arrive under the command of officer Zeiler and arrest both Holzers. Anyá can no longer believe the assurances of the now genuine police officers and tries desperately to flee. When Zeiler and a policewoman catch up with her in a nearby wooded area, she screams out her despair before collapsing in tears.