At the bottom of a lake, the police find a car with a wax corpse in the trunk. It is 15-year-old boarding school student Alex, who has been missing for five years. With the sad certainty that she has been murdered, the case, which should have been closed, takes a completely new turn. Her teacher, the charismatic Hajo Rick, convicted of her murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence and witness statements, could be innocent after all! When the ambitious defence lawyer Sophia Dreyer obtains a retrial, the former investigator finds himself in trouble: Chief Inspector Kai Matzen now has to throw the certainties of the past overboard - and realize that he is more personally involved than he would like. Sophia also suspects that she can't trust anyone. And what if it was Hajo Rick after all? Dreyer and Matzen investigate independently of each other, each in their own interest, and reconstruct Alex's last hours. In the process, they uncover an intrigue.
Acting
Petra Schmidt-Schaller's controlled unraveling is *chef's kiss*.
Direction
Pfeiffer frames boarding school like a gothic tomb.
Writing
Retrial structure keeps you complicit in every wrong conviction.
Director
Maris Pfeiffer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
German crime cinema's 'Heimatkrimi' tradition meets post-#MeToo institutional skepticism — boarding schools as microcosms of sealed power.
The wax corpse technique references actual forensic preservation cases in 2010s Germany; production consulted with Munich police cold case unit.
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