Lana Stokowsky (Hannah Schiller) is out and about with her seven-week-old daughter in downtown Magdeburg. The student pushes her baby in the stroller and witnesses a skater run over a passer-by. Stokowsky intervenes, wants to settle the dispute and doesn’t pay attention to her child. It is a brief moment of inattention – with fatal consequences. When she turns around again, the pram is gone: the infant was kidnapped by Inga Werner (Franziska Hartmann). Werner is the neighbor of Kriminalrat Uwe Lemp (Felix Vörtler). When he shows up unannounced in front of her door, she loses her nerve. She knocks out Lemp and takes him hostage in her apartment. Chief Inspector Doreen Brasch (Claudia Michelsen) not only has to find the kidnapped baby, but also rescue her colleague. Her investigations initially focus on Stokowsky’s ex-boyfriend Christian Novak (Max Hemmersdorfer). He is said to have molested and stalked the young mother.
The film mainly focuses on leading actress Franziska Hartmann, who plays the kidnapper Inga Werner. For the viewer, she is clear from the start as the perpetrator. She is shown pushing the stroller through the crowd without attracting much attention and bringing the baby to her home. The tension arises from the question of why Werner is acting this way. She appears as a woman full of contradictions and acts completely unpredictably. While she gives the kidnapped baby a lot of love and attention, she meets Kriminalrat Lemp with extreme brutality. Director Jens Wischnewski and screenwriter Khyana el Bitar have succeeded in creating the moving portrait of a traumatized woman who seems to use every means possible to keep the kidnapped baby. The situation escalates so much that there is even a dead body at the end.
In March of this year, the last “Polizeiruf 110” ran from Magdeburg, which was also about a missing child. Although it was about a ten-year-old boy at the time – this time the missing person is a seven-week-old girl – the investigations are still similar: Inspector Brasch is doing everything to find the child as quickly as possible and hastily commits herself to a suspect. The fate of Kriminalrat Lemp is not really innovative either. The fact that an investigator becomes a victim and thus a key part of the plot is a subject that has often been tried. In the past there was a case where Commissioner Brasch was held and abused by a perpetrator – this time her colleague got it.
Kriminalrat Uwe Lemp actually wants to take a three-month sabbatical in Scotland, but he never gets there. Instead, he lies badly beaten up in his neighbor’s apartment and is being held captive. His colleague Doreen Brasch suspects nothing of all this and investigates in the wrong direction for a long time. The decisive clue comes thanks to Lemp’s cat, which Brasch is supposed to take care of in his absence.
Strong leading actress, moving topic and the first new Sunday thriller after the summer break: only three reasons to turn on the case from Magdeburg.
Commissioner Doreen Brasch recently investigated these cases:
